Why Are Residential Parking Zones Free!?
We are used to publicly funded goods in Canada, whether they are health care services or public transit. In some cases like transit, we pay a small fee compared to the subsidy or none at all when it comes to going to the hospital. What I don’t think that most Canadians would be okay with would be for a publicly funded good that is only for the benefit of a small, likely wealthier, subset of the population. Yet for whatever reason we have been convinced that this is okay when it comes to residential parking, at least in Victoria.
I am not exactly sure when we started having Residential Only Parking though I could find a complaint about a bylaw being passed in 1974. Here a Jon Pettersen of Doncaster Street says,
“It is quite obvious that this bylaw is discriminatory because in effect it gives residents of a particular area an exclusive parking right on city streets, a privilege which is not obtainable by the ordinary citizen. Surely this is the same as giving an extra piece of property to certain privileged individuals.”
46 years later and I couldn’t agree more and yet we have let this giveaway of a public good happen without challenge. I can only imagine how much money the city could have taken in over that time had there been at the very least, a permit system in place. Apart from the loss of revenue there is another issue with free residential only parking, and that is that is it is free. It is often assumed that anytime you provide a good for free it will be used more than it would be if there was a cost to it.
I did submit a question to City of Victoria parking services on residential parking. I had read the Streets and Traffic Bylaw and noted that there are actually two different types of residential parking, one is just free, but you have to let the City know your license plate and the other is a permit system. Apparently there are only 5 blocks in the city that use the permit system which actually seems quite unfair to those five blocks that they are having to pay a total of $20.00 a year to park on their street while so many others get it for free. I want to focus on the other 95% of Residential Only Parking however.
Free residential only parking is simply unjust, as a property owner you own the area within the boundaries of your property and yet for some reason we (the citizens of Victoria) are giving some property owners a free parking spot near their house that other Victorians can’t use. The more I think about it the more unfair it seems. The fact that on top of having this exclusive parking spot and that it is free, is even more problematic as it makes it seem valueless when it is a very valuable resource and certainly has a cost that is covered by the broader population. I think it is time to fix this blatant giveaway of public resources. The bonus being that any just fix could have multiple benefits: it may result in greater access for more Victorians to parking; it could provide more revenue for the City; and maybe even result in less vehicles on the road. Here are three systems in place that could be considered to change our current system (there are of course many other options as well).
Residential Permit Parking
This is likely the easiest of options for the City, as there is already an option in the bylaw for it. All it would require is a changing of the free residential parking over to permit residential parking. While the bylaw as it is now, has the fee set at $20.00 a year. I think you could also increase it to more like $120.00 a year. I mean $10.00 a month for guaranteed street parking right outside your door seems like a very good deal compared to some of the downtown lots that are at least ten times that amount. This would have a few benefits. The City would be bringing in a completely new revenue stream that they need and at the same time placing a price on the use of the public land would make people think about whether they needed to do it or not. There may be people who can have their car parked off the public road that would change their practices due to an extra cost. There may even be people that might forgo having a car at all, though at such a low cost, it seems unlikely. The biggest issue with this system is that it continues to create a privileged parking area for those that own a house on the street they live on. In deep residential areas this may not be a problem but in areas close to a commercial zone it is limiting and has a negative impact on local businesses.
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New York Style Free For All
It may be surprising to some people that New York City is full of free parking! I mean in most of Manhattan and the commercial areas of the other boroughs, you have street metering just like you do here, but head into a residential area and there is a good chance it will be free. This system has some significant issues for sure, but those issues are also some of the benefits too. From my experience these type parking zones in residential areas are limited to parking in a certain area for a set amount of days, with some days off limits for street cleaning. This means that you might have Tues-Thurs & Sat-Sun Parking with street cleaning on Friday and Monday. While the street cleaning is a benefit, it also forces every car to be moved at least twice a week so they better be running! It also creates a certain equity in that the parking is open to anyone that wants to park there. If you live nearby you likely have an advantage in getting a spot but you might not and there may be times where you have to park a couple of blocks away. This makes it certainly more challenging, but since it is free there is still a benefit and the benefit is shared by everyone in the city. The downside of course for this system is that it has no financial benefit for New York. I do think that the challenge of finding a spot will make some people think twice about whether to have a car. We do have some areas in the city with no parking signs at all currently, including the street where I live, and if there was a time limitation that forced people to occasionally move there car it would at least make them conscious of the fact that it was a resource, even if they don’t pay for it. Still there must be a better way though…
Seattle’s Restricted Parking Zones
I think that the system that Seattle has put into place might be improved union of the two previous systems, as it creates equity, income for the city, parking opportunities for residents while also helping small business customers find parking close to their store of choice. Seattle has what it calls “Restricted Parking Zones”. I do want to quote a couple of points from their fact sheet because it does reinforce what I am trying to say. First, it starts out by saying that, “Curbspace is a limited public resource…” which it is, but it important that it is labeled as both a public resource and limited. The fact sheet goes on to say, “Because it’s public, restricting the use of the curb requires a compelling reason…”, this again reinforces the fact that this is a resource owned by all of the city and that limiting access requires a significant hurdle and simple residence nearby is not enough.
So what is an RPZ? Well it is a zone that allows residents of that block to buy permits to park along that street, like the first example I provided above. However, in addition it is also open as a time limited parking zone for anyone that wants to park there during certain hours. In Victoria, I think that this would be of great benefit for Cook Street Village, North Park Village, Fernwood Village or really any commercial area that is currently surrounded by Residential Only Parking. People would have greater access to the businesses while it would still allow residents to buy parking permits to grant them nearby spaces.
A further extreme would be to make all parking in the city permit parking and that anyone that wanted to park their car on the street would have to pay for it but remove the residential portion so that you would still have the competition for space and you might not get one close to your house. This would be the most far system by far but also the least likely to ever pass. Still we need to be aware of the fact that when we park our car on a street, especially if we aren’t paying for it, that we are using a public resource.
Are there any other parking systems that you have seen that deal with this equity issue? I would love to hear about them!