Bouldin Creek and SoCo parking

The overflow street parking from the SoCo shops and restaurants drives some Bouldin Creek homeowners nuts.  They want a Residential Permit Parking Program, which would give them the exclusive right to park on "their" streets.

These complaints have always rankled me because the Bouldin Creek residents want to have their cake and eat it too.  They enjoy all the benefits of proximity to SoCo (and increased property values), but they want the city to shield them from the costs.  If this happens to crimp business for the SoCo shops and restaurants, so be it.  Of course, the SoCo businesses opened up shop on the assumption that their customers could park on the streets.  I see a rough equity in the current arrangement.

Equity aside, the RPP program is an inefficient solution to the problem of overflow parking.  The street parking is likely more valuable to the businesses than to the residents; I suspect the businesses would outbid the residents if the city put the right to street parking up for bid. Yes, the street parking irritates the residents, but it's cheap to complain and cheap to demand something for free.      

A better way to handle these conflicts is through Parking Benefit Districts.  Under this program, the city installs parking meters on the streets, puts the revenue into a capital improvement project fund, and then uses some of that revenue for neighborhood improvements. 

Parking Benefit Districts offer several advantages over Residential Permit Parking districts:

1.  If the city prices the street parking right, a few spots will always be vacant.  Drivers will not have to circle the blocks searching for vacant spots.  (It's the equivalent of congestion pricing a road.)  This will cut down on traffic, one of the neighborhood's main irritants.  

2.  Free parking distorts the incentives for both businesses and their patrons. Charging for parking gives patrons the incentive to factor in the full cost of driving, which might affect their decision whether to drive or take a bus or taxi instead.  (Note that all of us benefit when late-night revelers are discouraged from driving.)  Charging for parking also signals businesses when to build more parking.

3.  PBDs generate revenue for the city, and provide a form of "soft" compensation for the inconvenience to neighbors.

4.  PBDs eliminate the inequity of granting a windfall to the area homeowners at the expense of businesses that opened on the reasonable belief that these streets would be available for parking.

One final point. There are people who are happier living in suburbs and people who are happier living in urban neighborhoods.  Urban neighborhoods always have more congestion, more noise and more strange people parking on the streets.  Bouldin Creek, like many other central Austin neighborhoods, is becoming more urban.  Over the long run, it will attract the kind of people who are more comfortable with the inconveniences of urban living.  The city should not give in to the people fighting a rearguard action to maintain the the neighborhood as a semi-suburban enclave.  It's better to give everyone the notice that parking meters provide:  This is becoming an urban neighborhood, and the City won't try to stop it from happening. 

Comments

[M1EK]

Could not agree more. Another problem with RPPP is that it leads to empty streets, which leads to 'speeding' traffic, which leads to calls for traffic calming.

The best traffic calming of all is a bunch of parked cars. My old street in Clarksville (Waterston) usually has car speed at about 15 mph. Not because of speed humps, stop signs, traffic circles, chicanes, but because of parked cars. Our current street (35th) has much faster traffic - partially due to the fact that hardly anybody parks on it during the week.

[heyzeus]

Bouldin Creek, you do not own the street; the city and by proxy the taxpayers who pay for its upkeep do. AC has already basically said it all; if you enjoy the benefits of living in an urban area that is walking distance to restaurants, shops, and bars, then you have to accept that people will come to your area to patronize them.

[natrius]

I have a feeling that they'd be more against parking meters, even if the money was going to improve their neighborhood. People react negatively enough to hearing that they don't own the streets, so I'd assume that dispelling any argument that they own the streets by making them pay to park on it would be even more of a slap in the face.

[Alex]

Yes! Yes! YES!

[Mark Cathcart]

Actually, I think you'll find quite a few of the streets west of Congress around SoCo already have RPP. Secondly the discussion on Austin Metroblogs was actually about RPP around Polvos although the bulk of the post was actually a more general and balanced review; Third the parking problems are often caused by illegal, over expansion by the restaurants and businesses. Surely its not reasonable to just say residents should just suck-it-up and "suffer"?; Fourth and in this case, the problem of parked cars on both sides of S 2nd St recently stopped emergency services access, so not unreasonable to expect to see something change and PBD's wouldn't help.

On the other hand, I do like the idea of PBD's, I for one would rather have that than deserted streets. It would be useful to hear how they've worked out. How many people pay, how many got prosecuted for not paying etc. Ultimately, neither RPP or PBD would work if not actively policed and prosecuted.

[bittergradstudent]

Of course, these same people also would believe that their right to park in bike lanes in front of their houses is inviolable.

[M1EK]

Mark, there's plenty of evidence that if there were one or two more completely legal restaurants in the area, you'd still be experiencing parking distress even if the 'illegal' one closed, so it's kind of silly to point the finger at 'illegal' expansions (which in my opinion should have been legal, anyways, except for the case where the one place expanded over the sidewalk).