Streetsblog has long covered the widely held belief that a residential parking permit program would be beneficial to the city. There is very little consensus on that issue, but since we recently published yet another analysis, we decided to offer another voice on the issue.
Resident Only Permit Parking programs are ubiquitous outside of New York City: London, Paris, Barcelona, Montreal, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Antonio, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and D.C. all have programs. And all the towns around New York City have them.
What do these programs look like? The crucial component is that every resident must apply for a permit for on-street parking — and that application must connect their in-state driver's license to an in-zone home address and a vehicle with an in-state license plate registered to said address. (More on this later). Residents with such a permit are allowed to park in exclusive Resident Only Zones. Visitors are restricted to short-term metered parking. Typically these programs charge a small fee to cover the cost of the program, between free and $150 a year — a pittance.
What can a Resident Only Permit Parking program accomplish? First, let’s look at what it won’t accomplish: It will not, I repeat, will not generate a surplus of parking spots. Drivers will still circle around for a spot, albeit less endlessly, perhaps a 10- to 15-percent reduction. Why will there be no surplus of parking? Because no matter how much parking is provided, there will be cars to fill those spots.
First, many of the owners of cars with out-of-state plates will pre-emptively register in New York to qualify for the program. And without getting wonky here, this is the lesson learned by trying to build your way out of congestion: The more you build the more they will come. For those in the upper half of the income spectrum, owing a car is not a significant financial drain. Should a significant surplus ever be created, more people would purchase vehicles as parking is now less-time consuming.
But a permit program can achieve quite a bit if we reconceive such a program not as a cure-all, but as an opening salvo in taking back city streets. First, such a program will eliminate parking being taken up by commuters from other neighborhoods who finish their commutes on public transit. This is a large concern in Upper Manhattan, where I live.
And because owners with out-of-state licenses will have to register in New York State, the residential parking permit can also be a tool in the fight against ghost vehicles and fake plates.
The real benefit to a Resident Only Permit Parking program is that it is the opening salvo in reconceptualizing the streets of New York City. Most on-street parking is priced at zero, but as Donald Shoup and so many others have pointed out, it is anything but free. Driving a vehicle in a dense urban area also incurs significant costs in pollution and other externalities.
Worse, those who benefit from free on-street parking are a small minority — automobile owners, who are just 20 percent of households in my Manhattan Community Board 12 — while the costs of air pollution, congestion, infrastructure maintenance, the road violence on our health care system, and the loss of the use of the streets are borne by all. In fact, from an economic standpoint, it is easy to show that free on-street parking is a direct subsidy from the poorest residents to the richest. A permit program will not solve these problems, but it presents a policy that allows us to see and to state them.
One irony is that the far right economist Milton Friedman would be a strong advocate for not only a Resident Only Permit Parking program, but one priced to the point where all the costs of parking a car — from the actual construction cost of the street, its maintenance, the loss of use of the street to everyone else, and a dollar amount added to offset the externalities of pollution and traffic violence. In this market interpretation, Permit Parking fees would at a minimum cover all the discernible costs of parking, and at a maximum, be set at a rate that would be the market rate.
To date, no Resident Only Permit Parking program has incorporated a pricing strategy of this kind. No doubt the monthly cost of a permit would then be between $200 and $600 a month. (That pricing would create a backlash over the loss of what once was free while simultaneously enforcing the belief that curbside space belongs to drivers because, indeed, they'd be paying for it.)
To create — or at least try to create — a surplus of parking, permits would have to be set at these higher prices (which would require Albany approval). Even then, the law of induced demand suggests that additional cars would be purchased by those who have more money than time, triggering again an equity debate of a different kind as lower income households are simply priced out of the market.
Enacting a Resident Only Permit Parking program will provide a vehicle – no pun intended – for raising all these issues in a public forum. For instance, what would the effect of a ROPP program coupled with a return to twice-a-week Alternate Side Parking achieve? To me, the return to the older ASP standard would have a dramatic effect on both the warehousing of vehicles and the inclination to park rarely used vacation getaway vehicles on the street.
And what if a ROPP program was coupled with an expanded Congestion Relief Zone, perhaps an island-wide pricing program that consists of many small zones while also charging cars for using the FDR and the West Side Highway? It seems absurd that there is not a toll system that simply is designed so that those who drive the most pay the most. (My motto? Every block should be an EZ Pass block.)
These types of changes would finally dictate that private vehicle owners pay the actual costs of vehicle ownership and use in New York City. While this may seem “radical,” note that water, another public good that is used privately, is paid for by the end user through a system of water meters in every building.
It's time to reconceptualize driving a private vehicle in New York City as a privilege and not a right. Resident Only Permit Parking is a rational first step, both as a minor policy tool, and as a way of fundamentally altering how we conceive of private automobile use in a public sphere, i.e. city streets. New York City was founded, and thrived, long before the introduction of the automobile. It’s time to change the parameters of the conversation: that’s the necessary first step towards realizing the city we all wish to live in.
