City Council is moving forward with the dynamic parking idea:
http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/7288518-74/parking-rates-dynamic#axzz3KqIFDbML
Quote:
Parking rates and enforcement hours would fluctuate based on demand in Downtown Pittsburgh and a dozen other neighborhoods under legislation City Council introduced Tuesday. . . . Targeted neighborhoods include Oakland, Shadyside, Strip District, North Side, South Side, Squirrel Hill, Uptown Brookline, Mt. Washington, Bloomfield, Garfield and East Liberty. . . . Dynamic rates would be set by Finance Director Paul Leger, who could also extend meter enforcement to 10 p.m., according to the legislation.
Two Carnegie Mellon University professors tested a dynamic parking system in 400 spaces around the Oakland campus and found that it triggered greater availability while generating more revenue.
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This is very good policy, but I predict there will be at least some push back from the crowd who thinks any increase in parking revenue means the City is screwing non-residents and discouraging such people from visiting or working in the City. The idea of extended enforcement hours is also a red flag for such people.
What they generally don't understand is that part of the idea here is to offer
lower rates in slightly less convenient locations, which increases utilization of those spaces and improves availability in the most convenient locations. This increases utilization overall and that is what drives revenues higher. Here is a CMU article laying that all out:
http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/computing/2014/summer/performance-parking.shtml
Quote:
Before 2012, the price of parking near Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus was inexpensive, but finding spots to park during peak hours was difficult. When the Pittsburgh Parking Authority raised rates in January 2012, the streets emptied. . . . That's when Fichman, an associate professor of organizational behavior, sought out Spear, a professor of economics. . . . The duo culled thousands of entries in a database created by the kiosks. Using that information, they determined current occupancy rates and asked the Pittsburgh Parking Authority to adjust prices accordingly. "The peripheral streets remained empty, so we lowered those prices," Fichman said. "We had signs made that say 'economy parking' or 'premium parking,' and the city installed them."
. . .
Within six months, the professors found prices that filled spaces to around 80 percent of capacity. Revenues went up and occupancy rates on streets in high demand dropped, leaving spots open for the occasional student (or professor) scrambling to make an 8 a.m. class. . . . "It's a huge improvement now that the multi-space meters have come in that they can now change the prices over the wireless internet," Spear said, adding that as these technologies mature, municipalities will work on improving optimization, which in turn will ease congestion and improve convenience for drivers. "If you can hit all three of those targets at once, that's a great thing," he said.
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That target of 80% utilization is sort of a best practices standard for street parking (it is consistent with people usually being able to find a spot quickly if they want one, but not leaving so many spots open that prices have acted as a major deterrent). And if they are hitting a high utilization rate, that means they are in fact attracting a lot of parkers, AND making the most efficient use of the most convenient locations (the same logic that applies to a student/professor rushing to make a class also applies to a shopper trying to pop into a store, or a person trying to make a dinner date, or so on).
And on top of all that, as alluded to briefly, hitting that 80% target can mean a lot less of people driving around trying to find a parking spot in their preferred location (whether that is because it is most convenient, or the cheapest around, or any mix in between). That can be a very large source of congestion in certain areas, and it is also bad for the environment, bad for local businesses and pedestrians, and so on.
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