American cities are realizing the importance of an efficient parking system. And as a result, new technology, smartphone apps and other innovations cropping up across the country.
But as UCLA’s “prophet of parking” Donald Shoup notes in ACCESS magazine, there are a few simple ways municipalities can get more residents on board with pesky parking regulations. The author of the 2005 book “The High Cost of Free Parking” shares five strategies that American cities should implement in order to making parking meters popular.
Use pay-by-plate technology
While many communities have replaced traditional parking meters with designated kiosks that enable drivers to pay by credit card or cash, Shoup suggests more cities should embrace tying a credit card to a license plate and allowing people to pay via smartphone.
Though more common in Europe, pay-by-plate systems have emerged in several U.S. cities, including Pittsburgh. Two years ago, Pittsburgh rolled out a system that asked drivers to submit their plate numbers at the kiosks and then pay by credit card or cash. The concept removes the process of printing new receipts to display on car dashboards and allows drivers to re-park their cars in the same zone without repeating the transaction. Police officers can also scan a plate to see if its driver has paid rather than searching for payment receipts. The new system has led to an increase in parking revenue for Pittsburgh, according to Shoup, as well as a decline in tickets issued as more people are using the easy process rather than taking the risk of receiving a ticket.
Offer discounts for greener cars
Environmental concern is increasingly playing a bigger role in new government initiatives, and Shoup explains that cities should implement green incentives into parking systems. For example, drivers can receive a discount for smaller cars that take up less space. By rewarding tiny sets of wheels, the city encourages residents to reduce the amount of emissions — saving on environmental cost.
Charge fees based on size
Streets come in all different sizes and so do parking spaces. Which is why Shoup suggests cities consider charging fees based on car length. Aside from the fact that smaller cars tend to be more fuel efficient, Shoup adds that they enable more cars to park in the same amount of space than large vehicles allow for. In many cases, street parking does not have lines to demarcate car spaces, which is why charging more for larger cars would discourage people from driving bigger cars in the city. “Most people who can afford to buy a longer car can probably afford to pay more to park it,” Shoup says.
Give residents a price break
Members of a community already pay taxes for local street maintenance and municipal parking garages, so rewarding them with a resident discount is not too much of a stretch. Local discounts can also help garner support for adding more parking meters to manage the system. Miami Beach, for example, gives its citizens a lower meter rate than non-residents and visiting tourist ($1 versus $1.75 per hour). That system also encourages locals to shop closer to home to receive the rate — ultimately decreasing driving and congestion.
Be charitable with earnings
While much of collecting parking fees is about making more revenue, Shoup adds that it can take on a different type of investment. Communities can be more innovative by donating portions to local nonprofits or park rehabilitation programs. For example, the Ventura, Calif., neighborhood used parking revenue to pay for safety patrol, as well as to implement public WiFi.
MORE: How an Innovative Parking Program May Cut Downtown Traffic by One Third
Tag: driving
The Simple Change to Traffic Lanes That Will Make Our Streets Safer
There’s a well-intentioned but flawed characteristic of America’s roads: They’re way too wide.
The standard 12-foot wide traffic lane we see in most parts of the country are a death trap, according to Jeff Speck’s incredibly detailed and extensively researched essay in The Atlantic’s CityLab.
The Washington D.C-based city planner argues that wider roads cause drivers to travel faster, and thus, cause way more damage if they hit another vehicle, bicyclist or pedestrian. The ideal road width, he contends, is 10-feet wide because drivers will slow down thinking there’s less space to cruise.
The reason why our country’s roads got so wide in the first place is because many states and counties believe that bigger lanes (some as wide as 14-feet) are safer and reduce congestion. However, this design is especially dangerous in communities where there’s more foot traffic.
MORE: D.C., New York City and Boston Named Tops for Foot Traffic
Speck points out that even though accidents happen on 10-foot lanes just as often as 12-foot lanes, since cars are traveling slower, it’s less likely to result in a fatality if someone is hit. “According to a broad collection of studies, a pedestrian hit by a car traveling 30 m.p.h. at the time of impact is between seven and nine times as likely to be killed as one hit by a car traveling 20 m.p.h,” he writes.
For those who are wondering if 10 feet is enough space for their large SUV or truck, Speck counters that in his hometown of D.C., there are even 8-foot lanes that work wonderfully.
With 34,000 people killed on American roads annually, it’s time to look at what changes need to be made immediately.
Speck’s most important point is this: “What would happen if these lanes were reduced to 10-feet wide, as proposed? Three things. First, cars would drive more cautiously. Second, there would be roughly eight feet available on each side of the street for creating protected cycle lanes, buffered by solid curbs. Third, the presence of these bike lanes would make the sidewalks safer to walk along. All in all, an easy, relatively inexpensive win-win-win that DOT [the Department of Transportation] could fund tomorrow.”
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Will Providing Drivers’ Licenses to Undocumented Immigrants Improve Safety?
According to the New York Times, there are around 11.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, many of them driving — regardless of whether or not they are licensed. Which is a somewhat scary situation facing the rest of us out on the roads.
In response, a growing number of states (including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington) have begun to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. According to the Seattle Times, as of last year all but two states — Arizona and Nebraska — had altered their laws to at least allow immigrants brought here as children to obtain driver’s licenses.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., told Andrea Billups of NewsMax, “It doesn’t given them any legal status, but by giving them a government-issued ID, it helps them imbed in society.”
As for the rest of the states who haven’t given driver’s license privileges to undocumented people yet, it might make financial sense to do so. According to Hispanically Speaking News, when the Massachusetts legislature was debating this idea in March, the head of the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles, Celia Blue, said licensing undocumented drivers “would generate nearly $15 million in state revenue through license fees and other charges, plus $7.5 million in renewal fees every five years.” Massachusetts state senator Joseph Vital said, “This isn’t to excuse the fact that they’re undocumented. But they’re on the roads. They’re driving. Many uninsured.”
When Colorado passed a law allowing for the licensing of undocumented immigrants last June, the bill’s sponsor, state Senator Jessie Ulibarri, said that law enforcement supported the legislation, according to Reuters. “Our roads will be safer when we can properly identify everyone who drives on them. We estimate that thousands more Colorado drivers will get insured because of this law.”
Sarah E. Hendricks of Drake University wrote in her April report “Living in Car Culture Without a License: The Ripple Effects of Withholding Driver’s Licenses from Unauthorized Immigrants,” published by the Immigration Policy Center, “States that do not offer driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants will limit the contributions that immigrant communities as a whole can potentially make, are likely to face negative economic and public safety consequences, and tend to fail in attempts to use such restrictive state-level policies to reduce the presence of unauthorized immigrants.”
MORE: It Wasn’t Easy to Welcome 25,000 Refugees, But Boy is This Town Glad it Did
Their Daughter Died When She Didn’t Buckle Up. Now They’re Working to Save Other Children From the Same Danger
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Commission, more than 33,000 people were killed in car crashes in 2009. Of those fatalities, more than half were not wearing their seatbelt. Last year, Alexa Johnson, a 19-year-old Colorado resident, was one such victim.
Johnson died when she lost control of her pickup truck in rural Weld County, Colorado and was ejected through the driver’s side window. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
Colorado highway officials note that many drivers on rural roads fail to wear safety restraints. In fact, 59 percent of the unbuckled fatalities in Colorado last year occurred on rural roadways. Alexa’s father, Tad Johnson, told Monte Whaley of the Denver Post, “The first thing I felt was anger and then I wanted to blame someone. And then I had an ‘aha’ moment and I said, ‘Alexa, what are we going to do about this?'”
Tad and his wife Jona launched a social media campaign to raise awareness about the problem of young adults in rural areas driving without seatbelts. He looked at the photos on Alexa’s Facebook page and said, “We saw that in all those photos, hardly ever was Alexa and her friends using seat belts. It’s something that we just had to deal with.”
The Johnsons took to Facebook with their message about buckling up for safety, and then began to sew inch-wide Velcro ribbons that wrap around seat belts to remind drivers to use them. The ribbons are called Alexa’s Hugs, and since last year, the Johnsons have produced thousands of them, which now come in a variety of designs.
Alexa’s Hugs have already saved at least one life. Alexa’s friend, Kole Kilcrease told Whaley he was driving near the same stretch of highway where Alexa died when he hit ice and lost control, rolling his pickup two-and-a-half times. Both Kilcrease and his passenger survived because they were buckled in. Kilcrease said, “I never really buckled up because it just seemed like an inconvenience. You have a busy day, and you have other things on your mind. I don’t think that anymore.”
MORE: A 16-Year-Old Died in A Car Accident. What Happened Next Changed Hundreds of Teenagers’ Lives.
Plug Your Phone Into Your Car and You Might Just Save Money and Lives
Want to save money on gas and improve road safety? Automatic, a new San Francisco-based startup, is helping drivers learn “hypermilling,” a practice in which drivers reduce bad habits that waste fuel. By hooking up a smartphone to a car’s OBD-II Data Link Connector (found underneath the steering wheel in most cars produced after 1996), and downloading the corresponding app, drivers can be alerted when they make errors such as accelerating too quickly or slamming on the brakes. The information is then consolidated by the app to give the driver a final grade between 60 and 100. The idea is that observant drivers will modify their behavior (even if just to avoid the beeping, which goes off when a mistake occurs), saving up to hundreds of dollars each year on gas.
But Automatic also goes a step further by providing drivers with various “smart enhancements” to keep them safe. The app can diagnose mechanical problems, and dial emergency responders or family members if the car is in an accident. For the forgetful, Automatic can even remind you where your car is parked. You may not earn a perfect driving score, but peace of mind might be worth the frequent beeping.
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