And Jeff Tumlin is going to prove it. Come see him at the Wichita Art Museum on August 21 at 5:30 pm. Don't know who I'm talking about? Here's a taste:
"Every parking space is a wasted $30,000"
I have a low-grade smoldering obsession with parking right now. Blame it on strongtowns.org. It drives me crazy that when you look at a google image of my hometown, the parking takes up more space than the buildings themselves:
Acres of empty lots for temporarily abandoned cars in downtown (downtown!) Wichita.
The tax revenue from that parking? Zero, basically. The revenue from paid parking? I can't find the number, but I know it is low, because most of the spaces don't have a meter, and the ones that do have a meter tend to be 1950s models that only take quarters.
Anyway, I've fallen into a YouTube rabbit hole recently around parking. Other noteworthy bullets from the brief video above from Jeff Tumlin:
- For a single family, getting rid of one car = affording an additional $100,000 in mortgage
- Parking "search traffic" accounts for 8-74% of downtown traffic
- All parking meters need to accept forms of payment that people actually carry. Most of us don't carry change anymore
- The "right" price for parking is the lowest price that achieves about a 15% availability target
If you're really into this, and want to hear some health-related data, and you have an hour to spare, wade into this: