Meter Rates Should Be Based on Data, Not Guesswork

Will this data from all these ongoing parking studies be regularly released in full original form to the public online? I’m asking because you know that if you don’t, various special interests will howl with rage over it, so you may as well just do it preemptively.

This is a joke. The rates will never come down. The high rates will benefit people that currently pay the high short term parking lot rate, but will now be able to find street parking saving them money, while keeping the spots full. The people that will be hurt are those that have a little more time and way less money.

Part of the study should be the average value of the cars parking on the street before and after the sky-rocketing cost increases.

This is about not dealing with the high city worker wages ($82K per) by raising taxes oops I mean fees.

I missed how the rates will be varying by time and day. How much will it cost to measure all this and what will the technology cost to vary rates?

It is important to note that all of decision makers and city staffers receive free transit. The electives also get $192 monthly parking spot and city cars for official work.

DT has 20+% vacancy rates – stores are suffering – restaurants are hurting and this will not help. I enjoy a restaurant in the Market – my salad is about $7 – now I can either pay $6 to park or an extra 1 1/2 in transit times.

And yes, I enjoy finding a spot (used to like finding time on the meter) – one by one the little pleasures are eliminated.

I would like to see some way of tying parking into an incentive to get electric cars. I would be much more likely to buy an electric car or motorcycle if there was an incentive with free parking in metered spots or all-day in one and two hour zones. If the city of Seattle wants to be greener this could be a way to help the cause away from oil. Though if the city just wants cars off the streets there is no way this will work. Or maybe it would have to be a state law similar to the handicap parking law. Or maybe this is just a terrible idea.

Great idea. Add to it that all spots near intersections need to be small to enhance visibility. There could be two types of parking stickers, one for qualifying high mileage or electric cars. The spots near intersections could have charging stations that would supply at market electrical rates.

Disability cards need to policed to get rid of people using someone else’s card or fakers. The state issues the placards but the city is charged with investigating the fakes. To be clear, people entitled to the placards should not be hassled. Poor disabled people should get a break on parking costs but well off disabled people should pay meter rates.

In general, we should put out some carrots for low polluting cars.

This approach is desperately needed in the University District where there is virtually no on street parking available during evening hours between 6 and 8pm. In the morning, however, street parking is often wide open until shortly before noon.

Pricing curb parking at market rates will inevitably generate a lot more revenue than the city’s meters currently do. How about dedication of this additional meter revenue to Walk, Bike, Ride?

Electric cars do not solve the problem of congestion.

Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t see how raising parking rates will open up spots. You can only park at a spot for 2 hours, yes? I usually only need to park downtown for specific appointments. I usually need an hour and 1/2. If the street parking goes up $2, I’m pretty sure the lots will go up too. So what’s going to make me move quicker thus opening up a space? Or make me go first to the higher-rate lot?

If the rates do go up, I’ll probably be more reluctant to go downtown for the things I do now. And don’ start telling me to take the bus or light rail. I don’t have an extra hour or more to walk/wait/ride/walk, etc.

After the cut congestion part in the same sentense it says “… and cut greenhouse gasses …”

I sent that idea to Richard Conlin back on 10/5, basically a simple buy one get one sticker you put inside your window where you are supposed to post the receipt. Buy an hour, get two.
(McGinn was out of town that day)
Dear Mayor Pro Tem Conlin,
In an effort to encourage people to make a cleaner transportation choice please consider providing a way for all electric vehicles, and possibly hybrid vehicles, a way to get defray the rise in on-street parking.

Maybe there is a rebate, or a window sticker that Seattle residents can put in a window that doubles their purchased time (buy 1 hour, it is good for two?).

Confused, you are not the problem. There is no need to rush you out of your hour and 1/2 park.

The problem is often the employees of nearby businesses, who find the hourly rate of street parking such a comparative bargain that they feed the meter every couple of hours, and keep the curb parking locked up.

I’m not downtown that often. What percentage of the time do you find on street parking near your destination?

Yes, all of that is really going to save the City some money. Two kinds of parking stickers, charging stations, more policing of disability stickers (how do you even DO that?), somehow determining whether disability parkers are poor or well-off (and how do you do THAT?) — good god, do you realize how impractical all of that sounds?

Actually, make the EV parking law very similar to the handicap on street parking law. EV car owners pay for EV plates and a EV sticker. Not that hard. Make the fine significantly higher for illegally using handicap placards. Agreed that it would be problematic to charge for handicap placards.

“There could be two types of parking stickers, one for qualifying high mileage or electric cars.”

What if you drive your high mileage car more than I drive my low mileage car?

You can’t feed meters anymore; you buy stickers for no more than 2 hours. The parking checker knows when you’ve been there for two consecutive parking periods and you get a $25 ticket.

“Poor disabled people should get a break on parking costs but well off disabled people should pay meter rates. ”

Fuck me, do you enjoy being the clueless liberal?

I hate to draw attention to the fact that I don’t see this routinely enforced in the neighborhoods where I park. Downtown is different?

I’m okay with raising parking rates (or best thing would be to set them to the CPI like we do the minimum wage) but all we are doing with a policy of opening spots up is to price some citizens out of the opportunity to use a city service. You’re right, rates will never come down.

Right one Fred! What about my 31mpg gas only car that I only go 4 miles a day in compared to that electric car that uses up precious hyrdo electricity that could be sold at high open market rates (not currently, but we’ll get back there quickly) that would both create revenue for the city and reduce the need for coal in other parts of the country get cheaper parking!?

The greenness of EV might not be all it’s hyped to be since they use electricity that either is produced by coal, natural gas (only half as bad as coal) or hydro that could otherwise be used to reduce the demand for coal-produced electricity in other parts of the country and EVs still require massive amounts of impervious pavement/concrete to get around and keep congestion up for the other fossil fuel cars and trucks. Who know the life span of them too, they are complex and poor people can’t get their neighbor to fiddle around with it to fix it for them. Green cars would be highly efficient gas cars without all the bells and whistles that have very long life spans so that we don’t need to replace them every 5 to 7 years.

EVs are good, but not as great as everyone thinks.

They could something like bellevue which if I remember correctly, you can’t park on the same street for more than two hours total in a day so you would have to move your car.

Due to a 20 billion dollar light rail system, no one in Seattle uses cars anymore, and once the line goes to Northgate and Bellevue, the main problem will be that all have abandoned their cars because of light rail. Now we will have to tow away all the cars in the road, because of light rail.

Over the years, I’ve gotten tickets for quick stops in the Central District, Capitol Hill, and University District. I even got one during a 3 minute stop at Seattle Center to pick up my kid from day camp.

Parking enforcement is definitely out there, and they are watching.

I’m thinking the only way there will be more parking spaces in shopping districts is if there are less shoppers.

If I’m wrong here, someome correct me.

There should be an incentive that encourages a choice for somebody that is going to buy an electric car.
There should be much easier and cost effective ways to deploy renewable energy to the home.

Cyclists are actively lobbying to have greater portions of that evil permeable surface.
Buses drive on them, too. Buses are hybrid-electric too.

This is going off topic parking wise but… No doubt that EV is not perfect but if I had the choice I would rather not use gasoline. How about this scenario: Buy solar panels and inverter made in Washington (Silicon Energy in Marysville – I think) and buy a BMW electric car with carbon fiber parts manufactured in Moses Lake. City Light gives you back 54 cents per kilowatt you produce whether you use that electricity or put it back into the grid. Seems to me like a little incentive from the city to go a little greener would help push people into buying EV. And it wouldn’t hurt the companies that are supporting our economy by opening factories in our state. Granted the solar you produce isn’t working at night when you are likely charging your car but it is not gasoline either.

For two to five years, sure, but not some kind of permanent infrastructure. Let them use the carpool lane during that time, provide tax breaks like we have in the past (not sure if they are still in effect) reduce the car tabs for them. Incentives that are not permanent or costly to implement.

It’s bad enough that it’s going to cost Seattle City Light an arm and a leg to upgrade its infrastructure with all the new 240 outlets that people are going to be installing and using.

I like EVs, I just don’t think that one’s shit no longer stinks just because one drives one.

I got a ticket 3 minutes after the two hours were up in the Roosevelt District, as well as downtown.

You say City Light, but you really mean City Light RATE PAYERS and $0.54 sounds very high cause that is around 10 times the retail price it sales its electricity at; $0.054 sounds more like it, but I’m not sure. The solar you produce is working during the day when demand is highest (which is both beneficial from an infrastructure standpoint and finance standpoint) and your electric car you charge at night is beneficial because you’d be using electricity at its lowest demand time. Some think that EVs could charge at night and if going to be unused in the day could actually feed that electricity back to the grid during peak demands, but I think this would be too costly to actually make work; we’ll see.

Like I said above, EVs are good, just not perfect. Not to mention that the lithium that they use in their batteries almost completely comes from Bolivia, which could pose a problem in the future.

And it’s a tough call to provide perks and incentives to the wealthy who can afford to buy new electric cars but we need early adopters get get them going.

That pretty much makes sense. Maybe people would park for a shorter period of time or some people would shift to closer private lots because the walk is not longer justified with a smaller price differential. Or maybe those parking spots will be less used by the people most sensitive to a price increase and more used by people with cash to spend….

please. try to listen and be constructive. all we have to do is pass an ordinance that says:

any parking sticker counts 4x if attached to a e scooter, 3x if attached to a scooter, and 2x if attached to an e car. and 1/2 x if attached to a hummer, expedition or any car of a length greater than blah blah blah.

Sometimes people have a great idea and it just takes working out the details.

please. try to be constructive. this is about parking. if you drive your e car more and park it more than someone who drives a 12 mpg car, then the e car will pay for parking more because the e car is being parked more.

duh.

There’s a serious problem with debate in seattle. people just seem to be totally unable to take any good idea and not find some quibbling way in which to shoot it down. it’s like we’re all proud of our ability to independently go against the herd and show off. if you go only 4 miles a day it’s not likely you’re going to the metered parking areas as much therefore you won’t buy as many parking stickers therefore the idea of variable costs of parking based on e car or not e car is OBVIOUSLY A DAMN GOOD IDEA and if we’d all figure out how to do it we could do it, for example, we can just pass a law saying the 2.5 hour sticker you get from the meter counts double for e cars. I am sure all the brilliant engineers and nerds in this town could come up with other solutions but the culture is to use that brainpower to imagine impossible imaginative obstacles for the joy of shooting down good ideas.

yes, electric cars also do not solve the problem of illiteracy in the sudan, nor honor killings in pakistan. Yet another quibble asserting for joy of shooting down good idea.

again, jesus christ, e cars will reduce GHG by massive amounts and whether you like them are not are going to be hugely popular. to say “this is only a third the loaf we need or half the loaf we need” is the most puerile objection. Every single mark of human progress shows it comes in steps. first white males got the vote, if rich; then if middle income; then if poor, then women then we ended slavery. So you would have opposed the initial steps saying at least someone gets a vote, you would have supported the monarchy and been against the magna carta because it didn’t provide equal rights for gays?

“not as great as everyone thinks” = joy killer. E cars are great. They are huge progress, huge change. don’t be a wet blanket.

You do know that disables now get two hours of free parking no matter what income bracket they fall in.

Sarah – we already determine whether people should get a variety of low income benefits. They say that people that get food stamps also get the free disabled parking benefit, doesn’t seem that difficult.

Cars that qualified would get a sticker and it wouldn’t take checkers long to recognize qualifying cars. No, the policy wouldn’t be intended to raise money but rather to encourage higher gas mileage cars and make intersections safer. Not every government action needs to increase revenues.

A 31 mpg city mileage would probably make the cut and overtime the point is to make it more valuable to own higher efficiency vehicles. By charging at night and hopefully being able to sell it back during peak periods (as they can in Germany) electric cars will reduce their impact on the electric supply. It is estimated that excess night capacity could charge 72% of the total needed for an only electric car fleet.

So you’re pro tunnel, right? Cause you would never want to ask tough questions or kill someone’s tunnel buzz! There is a lot of cost involved with switching to EVs. Let’s not stifle the information just to keep the love buzz going.

Read recently an article about the closing Oregon’s only coal plant. Everyone wants it done right away, but ironically, keeping it open ten more years is probably the best environmental thing to do because it would be replaced by much better technology and not just natural gas, which is only half as bad as coal.

History has shown us that a lot of “obviously damn good ideas” were actually not that good. So lets understand that the EV is good, even much better, but far from perfect.

Wind power, for example, is one of those over-hyped ideas that people think solve everything, when in reality, while good, causes lots of problems and costs lots of money.

Agree on reducing the price differential. If the mantra of the right is that the free market is always right, then the pricing structure of free market private lot owners must know the “value” of a parking space. Those prices vary based on some formula the entrepreneur devises and that’s good enough for the City to copy. Carve the city into little areas, calculate the average private lot prices and that’s what the street price should be.

This just seems like a lot of adminsitrative overkill on several levels- varying rates depending on time of day; how many challenges and complaints are going to arise due to confusion over timing and length of stay? Like we don’t allready know what areas are popular and overparked? doesn’t this just price some neighborhoods out of reach for some people to insure that open one or two spaces?

This just seems like a lot of adminsitrative overkill on several levels- varying rates depending on time of day; how many challenges and complaints are going to arise due to confusion over timing and length of stay? Like we don’t allready know what areas are popular and overparked? doesn’t this just price some neighborhoods out of reach for some people to insure that open one or two spaces?

You need to really check out your facts about “high city worker wages”. At 82K per year, that includes all benefits. Stripping that out brings the average back down to the 54K/year base salary (65.7% of total compenstation for benefits, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation – September 8, 2010. Oh, that 28K in benefits package? Difference between private industry and state/local government benefit load is only 5%. We work hard for our residents. Yes, city wages are a bit higher than private industry. That’s a product of the skills required for city positions: information technology, finance, accounting, management, engineering, and skilled labor. We’re not flinging burgers here.

If its priced out of your reach the administration expects that you either bike, walk or take mass transit.

Do people who drop 30k on a car really need a break for parking?

Whether these stats include benies is not clear but the base salaries (w/o overtime or benefits) for Seattle City employees in 2007 was greater than the average household income. Two average city workers make twice the average household and they get great benefits on top.

Estimated median household income in 2008: $61,786 (it was $45,736 in 2000)
Seattle: $61,786
Washington: $58,078

Estimated per capita income in 2008: $43,012

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/city/Seattle-Washington.html#ixzz155oQBDgF

Whether these stats include benies is not clear but the base salaries (w/o overtime or benefits) for Seattle City employees in 2007 was greater than the average household income. Two average city workers make twice the average household and they get great benefits on top.

Estimated median household income in 2008: $61,786 (it was $45,736 in 2000)
Seattle: $61,786
Washington: $58,078

Estimated per capita income in 2008: $43,012

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/city/Seattle-Washington.html#ixzz155oQBDgF

As you found, I see rigorous enforcement of overtime parking, but not enforcement of meter tending, as parkers replace a soon to expire sticker with a new one covering an additional two hours. This is probably just due to the difficulty of monitoring which vehicles have paid previously during the day.

Perhaps downtown meter tending is better controlled, but this would surprise me.

Doug Campbell, as several of us have said, you can’t reliably replace your 2-hour sticker with another sticker. The parking checkers ticket you because they check that spot. The City actually thought of that.

If parking rates go up in the U District, everyone will shop at U Village where it’s free. It may take you 15 minutes driving around to find a spot, but it’s free. The merchants in the U District (just as the merchants downtown) are not exactly in favor of that; they need customers; they are already losing out to U Village.

I actual do not think that we should use the free market to set prices for any city services. City services should always be provided at cost and anything above “at cost” is a tax (or a tax in form of a fee). The “at cost” portion has steadily increased over the years while the rate has remained the same, so in a sense, inflation has slowly reduced the tax revenue portion. Let’s just raise the rate to get back to generating the tax revenue that we want from it.

Or shop somewhere else.

Sarah, I am a merchant in the University District. You are mistaken.

In the evening between 6 and 8pm it is very possible to drive for 15 minutes looking for a parking space. The lot at the U Book store is our only saving grace in the evening.

For the retailer this means NO automobile driving customers while the parking is locked up. Often these are the same customers who can afford to spend the most, at least at my retail store, which sells a lot of magazines that you can’t buy anywhere in U Village.

I opened and have owned Bulldog News since 1983. My customers complain about the lack of street parking (not the price of parking) more than any other issue.

We used to stay open in the evening until 10pm. We now close at 8pm but I am forced to consider closing earlier due to low evening sales. My customers simply can’t get to the store!!!

As for meter tending, it has always been illegal but it is very difficult to enforce.

As @foreign_observer pointed out, most city jobs are higher-skilled jobs and thus would have a higher compensation. And often public employees give up some of the upside benefits of the private sector for more stability and security.

One other thing to note.

As I understand the proposed data driven approach to setting hourly parking rates, parking meter prices in the U District are likely go DOWN during the morning hours when curb parking on the Ave is underutilized. Perhaps meters will charge only $1 per hour for parking during morning hours.

I would also guess that a $1 per hour meter parking rate in the evening might be just high enough a price to keep parking spaces turning over, giving customers access to my business, and Bulldog News a reason to stay open late.

and they’re being reinforced, too – 2 new parking enforcement slots in the 2011 budget.

You are a very special business, Doug, as you point out. The rest of the U District isn’t made up of Bulldog News businesses. I’ve been at several meetings where other merchants have complained that they are losing business to U Village.

Bulldog News has certainly lost a lot of business to Barnes and Noble’s magazine department. We hang on by providing a higher level of service and product knowledge.

Automobile access to the neighborhood is a huge issue, and a huge competitive advantage for U-Village.

Attempting to provide free or below market rate parking using the fixed and limited number of parking spaces available on the city’s streets results in a demand driven parking space lock-up. This chokes retail. Customers attempt to park, find they cannot, and do not return.

Development and better promotion of off-street parking options is the only path available to the U-District if we want to have the capacity to compete with University Village for automobile driving customers.

This kind of development is thwarted structurally by the Commercial Parking Tax, which does not apply to the malls.

Your first sentence implies that you think scooters park for free. Which undermines the rest of your argument that you’ve invested time researching parking in Seattle.