From: brad@optilink.COM (Brad Yearwood)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re: Socialized parking
Date: 16 Dec 92 06:34:28 GMT
Distribution: ca
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA


In article <jyc.724183527@Leland>, jyc@leo.Stanford.EDU (Jon Corelis) writes:
> joshua@Veritas.COM (Joshua Levy) writes:
> 
> >Haven't you figured out that socialism doesn't work in real life?
> 
>    I read an article in the newspaper recently in which the author
> pointed out that parking in our society is supplied along the principles
> of Soviet-style centralized planning:  a central organization, be it
> government or a private employer, takes it upon themselves to try to
> supply the desired amount of the resource by fiat rather than by
> marketing it.  And the result is that distribution of parking in the
> U.S. encounters the same problems as distribution of sausages in Russia:
> continual shortages, and structural inequities in which the elite (party
> officials in Russia, corporate big shots here) are unfairly supplied
> with the scarce commodity at the expense of everyone else.
> 
>    There's a lot to be said for this idea.  I personally think that all
> public and private parking should be charged directly to those who use
> it at what-the-market-will-bear rates -- and I mean all parking,
> including public curbside parking, employer-provided parking, and the
> lot at your local Safeway.  The resulting fees would no doubt be
> apalling, and a damn good thing too:  people ought to be aware of what
> parking really costs.
> 
>    Since many of the people who denigrate public transit on this
> newsgroup seem to be generally conservative, one might think that they
> would heartily endorse a proposal to end socialized parking and allocate
> this resource according to market principles.  But somehow I doubt we'll
> see this happening.  Like hope, hypocrisy springs eternal in the human
> breast.       

Nice to see one truth in the article.  Your own wishbone must be nearing its
elastic limit.

Since when is exerting fiat upon the structure of a market a free market?
By requiring explicitly separated payment, you have an un-free market.  If
Nixon makes a comeback, you could be in line for a nice post as an economic
advisor.  Don't confuse conservatism with free markets.

It is clear that you are interested only in punishing car drivers.  Let's
put an explicit payment on every little thing.  Let's put coin slots on
the sides of our terminals.  Usenet posts: $0.25 per paragraph.  Quarters
only.  At the restaurant, pepper will be $0.05 per 3 shakes, but the pepper
shaker, if the restaurant can afford one, will look much like a parking meter,
and few people will be able to lift it.  Let's have a cover charge at
supermarkets so the overhead and actual food costs can be conveniently
separated.  If we work hard enough, every aspect of daily life can be made
to resemble the pleasant experience of making a Medicare claim.  What an
alluring utopia.  [With due apology to LvM for shameless plagiarism.]

Perhaps you are also interested in creating visible, and therefore taxable
and disposable to pet projects, revenue streams.  At least the other people
who I've heard spouting this mandatory parking fee stuff lately are up-front
about this goal.

If you were interested in solving the transportation problem, you might start
talking about some combination of changing work structure in a way which helps
to replace transportation with communication [disclaimer: poster has a vested
interest in communication], and about changing land use structures in a way
which places decent housing and decent workplaces decently close to each other.

Some of this requires legislative relief: removal or radical restructuring of
zoning laws, and perhaps removing inequitable tax treatment of debt-purchased
vs. rented housing [disclaimer: poster rents], and some of it requires clever
and visionary large-scale architectural design (Los Angeles Times magazine
this Sunday, I believe, had some interesting ideas as well as some rotten ones).

In real high-density urban environments with real public transportation,
the high density, congestion, and parking expenses are already sufficient
punishment to motivate many would-be drivers to use public transportation
when and where it is available (and when and where the usually monopolized
provider isn't being held hostage to a strike).

It's a matter of utility, not of fiat.

Thank you for mentioning the local Safeway.

My friendly [?] local Safeway in suburban Rohnert Park has a huge parking
lot with no meters.  (One might even argue that all of Rohnert Park is
essentially a huge parking lot with no meters, but...)  I'm certain that
they pay a lot of money for that parking lot, and that some part of the $0.79
I pay for a package of frozen mixed vegetables went for my being able to park
"free".  I'm also certain that the (sizable number of) people who I see walking 
to the store (at least those who don't grab a shopping cart for the trip home
and leaved it dumped somewhere, who seem a large fraction) get less for their
money than those of us who stop off in our cars at midnight on the way home.

[Midnight.  That's the problem.  Only witches and other burn-worthies are
awake then.  Last SoCoTrans bus ran at maybe 6PM.  Could walk 1.5 miles
on muddy road shoulders in 10C weather then wait an hour or so for a GGT bus.
Drat - another 12 minute car trip.]

Another Safeway with which I am slightly familiar, in very dense, very urban
Washington, D.C., offers, if I recall correctly, no parking at all.  Their
prices are no lower (more likely higher) than I pay in suburban Rohnert Park.
Maybe I'll have someone there get me a definite benchmark figure on that
package of frozen mixed vegetables, if they have any.  [Aside: this place is
locally known as the "Socialist Safeway", because they are always out of
anything that you're looking for.]

Brad Yearwood     brad@optilink.com    {uunet, pyramid}!optilink!brad
Petaluma, CA


Newsgroups: ba.transportation