A proposal by the City to put parking meters in downtown Salem (Oregon) has some progressives wondering what side of the issue they should be on. Not surprising.
Progressives/liberals, of which I am proudly one, often aren't of the same mind. Anyone who has been part of a progressive group knows that leading them is a lot more like herding cats, than sheep. Liberals are independent-minded and like to go in all kinds of different directions.
Which is a great thing. Better decisions happen when diverse views are put out, heard, considered, and argued before a preferred direction is chosen.
Recently I got an email from a progressive who said, "I'm a bit confused at the possibility of meters being taken on as a negative by many progressives." He was torn.
On the one hand, he liked the efforts of Stop Parking Meters Downtown.
The group has gotten over 8,000 signatures on a petition that would ban downtown parking meters, charge $1 to park in downtown's parking garages, and limit annual increases in the parking tax charged to downtown businesses.
My progressive correspondent liked challenging the City, since public input on the City's parking meter proposal was extremely limited. However, he said that he bikes to work year round and doesn't want to support further "auto-centric" policies downtown.
He ended his message with a wonderfully progressive sentiment:
Those are my thoughts, Brian. I would be curious to know what your thoughts are about this issue and how you might challenge some of my views. I have an open mind.
Hey, me too.
If I heard some good arguments for installing parking meters in downtown Salem, I might change my progressive mind also. But I haven't. Here's a synopsis of why I oppose meters. For more detail, read my previous posts on this subject here, here, here, here, and here.
(1) Parking meters should be a traffic management tool, not a funding source. When an area is burdened with too many visitors in cars competing for too few parking spaces, meters can make sense. Modern electronic meters can charge different amounts at varying times of day. Thus parking meters can be used akin to "congestion pricing" on toll roads/bridges.
But the City of Salem is solely focused on using meters to raise money to pay for maintenance of downtown parking garages. So parking meters in downtown Salem would be used to keep free parking for cars in the garages by making drivers who use onstreet parking pay. Makes no sense. Which relates to...
(2) Big downtown retailers shouldn't get a big parking tax break while small businesses get a big parking tax increase. Recently the City more than doubled the annual minimum parking tax paid by small businesses, from $197 to $400. This was a blatant, and unsuccessful, attempt to coerce these businesses into supporting parking meters, since if meters are installed, the parking tax would go away.
On all businesses. Including large retailers like Penneys, which now pays a parking tax of over $40,000 a year.
The City's parking meter proposal would have Penney's pay zero, while also preserving free parking in the garages -- which primarily serve visitors to the large retailers like Penneys. Meanwhile, visitors to small businesses like restaurants, coffee shops, and the like would have to plug a meter to buy a $2 muffin or cup of coffee. For this and other reasons, the City projects a 20% decline in downtown visits by car. Really bad for the vitality of downtown, since suburban malls like Keizer Station have free parking.
(3) The City of Salem can't be trusted to reasonably discuss parking meters. This is obvious. Opponents of downtown parking meters have tried to engage City elected officials and staff. But the current leadership of the City is dedicated to lecturing, not listening; to making decisions first, and conjuring up reasons later; to shutting down public participation, not being the "public servants" they should be.
So the initiative to ban downtown parking meters was a necessary response to an unresponsive City of Salem.
Small downtown businesses recognize that at some time in the future, given certain conditions, with the right control over meter revenues, parking meters could be an element in policies to energize, enliven, and "green up" downtown. This is what the Streetscape plan is all about: making downtown more attractive to visitors by taking out a lane of traffic on some streets, making dedicated multi-use paths, adding sidewalk seating, etc.
But almost certainly this won't happen under the current City leadership. They're focused on keeping parking garages free and making onstreet parking paid. Which, as noted above, amounts to a big tax reduction for large retailers and a big revenue decrease for downtown small businesses.
(4) Listen to the people. I'm a believer in science, reason, and expert advice. Especially in certain circumstances. Global warming, for example. It simply isn't possible for someone to come up with accurate insights into global warming by experiencing the weather in their local area. That's why it is called "global" warming.
But the downtown parking meter situation is way different.
Consider: small businesses in downtown Salem live and breathe parking. Most of their customers arrrive by car. They know when people complain about not being able to find a space, or how difficult it is to find a space. They know how much they currently pay in parking taxes and what they get for the money. They know how many employees of downtown businesses park on the street, and how well the City is preventing this from happening so spaces are available to visitors.
The petition to ban downtown parking meters is overwhelmingly supported by downtown small businesses. The people who would be most affected by paid onstreet parking don't want meters installed. Likewise, the people who visit downtown also don't want meters -- as evidenced by the 8,000 signatures the Stop Parking Meters Downtown folks collected in a short time.
[Update: thought of another reason...]
(5) Downtown visits are good for the environment. As noted in (2), downtown businesses compete with "sprawl" businesses -- like those along butt-ugly and walking/biking-unfriendly south Commercial Street and Lancaster Drive. Plus horrendous Keizer Station, where you really need to drive to get to different parts of a freaking quasi mall.
By contrast, downtown offers a lot of shopping, eating, and entertainment possibilities within a few compact blocks.
Strolling down one side of one block on Court Street, I can take a dance class, learn Tai Chi, buy a muffin, get my hair cut, eat meat'y or vegetarian food, have a beer, buy coffee, and do other stuff. In one block. Elsewhere I'd have to drive, park, drive, park, etc. a long ways, burning up fuel, to do those things.
Subsidies are everywhere in our economy. We subsidize farmers for not growing stuff; we subsidize the fossil fuel industry for wrecking the environment.
So I don't get the argument that "downtown parking has to totally pay for itself."
If a compact, vibrant, green (in both regards) Salem downtown is a benefit to society, offering an alternative to energy-inefficient sprawl shopping/living, why shouldn't onstreet parking be kept free to visitors, with businesses continuing to pay a parking tax?
Yes, it'd be wonderful if everybody took mass transit, walked, skateboarded, or biked to downtown. But this isn't going to happen for a long time, if ever. So the cries that keeping onstreet parking free encourages an "autocentric" urban philosophy don't make sense to me. The auto is going to dominate travel in the Salem area for the foreseeable future.
The question is: how, where, and how much are people going to travel by car? I'd much rather see people get in their increasingly common electric/hybrid cars (we own a Volt; great car) and park free in downtown Salem, a central location where they then can walk to various businesses and other places, than have Salemites heading to Commercial Street, Lancaster Drive, Keizer Station, etc.
It may not seem rational that people would burn up several bucks of gas to save a buck on downtown parking meters, but people aren't rational beings. That's why the City is projecting a 20% decline in downtown visitors if meters are installed. They will go elsewhere to avoid the meters. That'd be bad for the environment, though good for Exxon/Mobil.
As noted above, this is a synopsis of why, as a progressive, I oppose downtown parking meters. Read the above-linked posts for more reasons.
"Which, as noted above, amounts to a big tax reduction for large retailers and a big tax increase for downtown small businesses."
Did you really mean to say the city meter plan would be a big tax increase for downtown small businesses, Brian? I don't get it.
Otherwise, well argued.
Posted by: Jim Scheppke | July 30, 2013 at 09:20 PM
Jim, when I wrote that line I guess I was thinking of "tax" in a very broad sense.
Meaning, a cost to be borne by downtown small businesses that resulted from the City installing parking meters. That cost would result from the estimated 20% drop in visitors to downtown after meters were installed.
Confusing language. I changed that sentence to "...and a big revenue decrease for downtown small businesses." Thanks for pointing out how poorly I said what I tried to say.
Posted by: Brian Hines | July 30, 2013 at 09:28 PM
Favoring the consideration of meters is not necessarily anti-progressive...to your points (others have made most of these points before, and perhaps these repeat thoughts your correspondent has already had or expressed):
1) There is a subset of downtown blocks (600 or 700 stalls) that operate at 92% occupancy at peak; this is well above the 85% threshold. There are good reasons to consider this demand management component and the City's proposal does so. It's not just about revenue.
2) A metering scheme could include a compensatory mechanism if there truly are equity issues with the big box stores. It happens, though, that the Liberty and Chemeketa Parkades (2 of 3) also serve small streetside storefront businesses, and do not exclusively serve the big box stores. This question of equity deserves more study, but it is possible that opponents of meters are overstating its magnitude significantly.
3) This has merit. The City has bollixed up almost everything, and even when they do something reasonable, they manage to compromise it or outright 'eff it up. Still, the parking proposal is offered in good faith - neither Bennett nor Peterson, as several have pointed out, could possibly have bad faith reasons to advance such an unpopular idea. The only reason to advance such an unpopular idea is that it actually has merit.
4) Autoism is so deeply entrenched that many people can't think around their cars and have large blind spots with them and the heavily subidized infrastructure that services them. There are good reasons to be sceptical of autoism and its popularity, and one of the main problems with autoism is it prioritizes machine over man: It counts cars downtown, not people, and has created a pernicious monoculture in transportation. If we want a more healthy downtown ecosystem, we have to have a more diverse transportation ecosystem, and this means managing the demand for car parking and creating more choices for people to get downtown - more freedom, more choice. Who doesn't want more choices on how to get downtown?! But right now most people feel the only way to go downtown is to drive.
Autoism has also contributed to the demolition of historic buildings and hollowed out the urban fabric of downtown with surface parking lots. Here's a map of the downtown off-street surface area devoted to parking. http://breakfastonbikes.blogspot.com/2013/05/downtown-parking-lots-free-parking-metered-parking.html More autoism is not the solution to downtown's ills, but rather has been a huge ingredient in its sickness. It has exacted an enormous cost on downtown. (Not to mention autoism's contributions to greenhouse gases.)
Free parking is a mid- and late-20th century solution that didn't actually solve much. Change is scary, but progress in the 21st century it is increasingly clear requires transitioning away from free parking and moving towards land uses, urban forms, and transportation systems that prioritize people over cars. Cars won't go away, and they are terrific for some things, but they are way overused and too heavily subsidized right now.
Posted by: Breakfast on Bikes | July 30, 2013 at 10:34 PM
Breakfast on Bikes, I added a (5) to my post, partly in response to your comment. It is well known that dense urban areas are the most environmentally friendly and energy efficient living/working possibilities for us humans. We need to encourage people to visit downtown Salem, not push them out to Sprawl World.
I share your vision for a less autocentric society. But as noted in the new (5), cars are going to be the main way people get around in the Salem area for a long, long time. Question is: where and how will cars be driven?
It'd be a lot better to encourage people to drive downtown, park, and then walk to the many businesses and recreational opportunities there. Alternatively, they will drive all over the place to free parking at Keizer Station, Commercial Street, Lancaster Drive, and such.
I don't understand how keeping onstreet parking free in downtown Salem is a capitulation to "autoism."
The parking spaces are there. They cost much less to maintain than the parking garages. The usage almost certainly is not as high as the City maintains. My understanding is that the City had to manipulate data unfairly to come up with a 92% figure for a small area of downtown at certain times of the day.
This is similar to the City's game-playing with Third Bridge plans. Ooh! Congestion is horrible! But not really. Only an hour or two a day, and there are many other ways to deal with that small problem than build a $700 million new bridge.
Likewise, the City looks at occasional times when it is a bit difficult to find an on-street parking space and cries, "We must have parking meters!" Not true. This is just an excuse to justify an already-made decision.
Regarding your faith in City leaders and elected officials... wow.
These are the same people who voted 9-0 to build the Third Bridge. Also, the same people who allowed the five US Bank trees to be cut down for no good reason. And now you believe that they MUST have a good reason to want downtown parking meters?
I've paid almost $750 (unwillingly) for public record requests related to the US Bank tree removal decision. Believe me, the documents don't put the city officials that you have confidence in, in a good light. Politicking and backroom dealmaking is how the healthy beautiful trees came to be cut down, not for any legal or otherwise reasonable reason.
The City of Salem can't be trusted to make fair policy decisions in the public interest. That's my conclusion after reviewing the big stack of public records. If you have more faith in the decision-making ability of the Mayor, City Manager, Public Works Director, Councillors, and other city leaders, great. I just haven't seen evidence that this faith is deserved.
Posted by: Brian Hines | July 31, 2013 at 11:23 AM