This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Why Free Parking Doesn't Help Downtown Easton

When it comes to parking, it's a mistake for Easton "to compete with the suburbs on suburban terms," writes columnist Jon Geeting.

This year Easton will turn off its parking meters every weekend until New Years, under the theory that this will increase sales for downtown businesses.

In reality, removing prices makes the parking situation much worse.

To be fair, this is a popular practice in many urban areas that have been getting burned by malls for decades. But that doesn't make it any less misguided.

Find out what's happening in Eastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The logic is that people who shop at the mall expect unlimited free parking, so paid parking acts as a disincentive to come downtown. 

But it is a mistake for Easton to try to compete with the suburbs on suburban terms.

Find out what's happening in Eastonwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Downtown Easton itself is barely larger than some mall parking lots, which is to say that there are many fewer places to park, especially during peak hours. This scarcity is a market good.

When there is a limited supply of some good or service, there are just two ways to distribute it: willingness to pay, or first-come-first-serve. People can pay money or wait in line. In the case of parking, this means circling the block waiting for someone to leave.

This is why cities have meters in the first place - to manage motorists' demand for scarce street space. And just as with any other scarce good, price changes affect the demand for parking.

When parking prices are too high, there are too many vacant spaces; when parking prices are too low, there are too few vacant spaces. This is what makes the free holiday parking idea so nonsensical.

If your goal is to entice a larger number of people to come downtown to shop, you're really trying to increase parking turnover. If turnover jumped from  to 5.7 times per day, that would mean more people were visiting downtown.

Removing prices reduces turnover of parking spaces by taking away the incentive for motorists to economize on how long they park.

For obvious reasons, no business owner would respond to peak demand by slashing prices. But that's precisely what the city is proposing to do here. I would expect the low parking turnover and congestion to cancel out or even overtake any positive effects from the free parking.

The city isn't wrong that holiday shoppers prefer not to pay for parking, but I would argue that the issue has less to do with money, and more to do with convenience.

It is inconvenient to have to remember to keep quarters with you, or to have to plan to return to your car to avoid a ticket.

I think these two annoyances irk people more than the actual dollar amount, and that they account for most of the unpleasantness of parking in a busy downtown area. The city's new smart meters take care of the quarters issue.

And the technology already exists that would allow people to put more time on the meter from their smartphones, although it doesn't appear that the meters Easton chose are equipped with this feature.

And while Street Smart Technology's meters will allow the city to visualize demand and vacancies in real time, it is not clear whether it will be possible to adjust prices to match demand during peak times

This is important. As the recent  showed, there isn't a parking problem downtown most of the time, but demand peaks around noon and 8pm. This would suggest that 50 cents per hour may actually be the market rate for parking most of the time.

If you wanted to make more spaces available during the peak hours around noon and 8, you could program the following schedule:

  • 10pm to 7am - Free
  • 7am to 11am - 50 cents
  • 11am to 2pm - $1.00
  • 2pm - 7pm - 50 cents
  • 7pm - 10pm - $1.00

More than free parking, I think people care about convenient parking.

Smart meters and market prices would satisfy that need, whereas the free holiday parking only results in lower turnover, more cruising and fewer holiday shoppers.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?