Signs at the entrance to the parking structure warns that beginning Feb. 1, parking will be charged in increments of whole hours, half hour increments will be discontinued. This means, for example, that 55 minutes will cost $1.10, 65 minutes will cost $2.20. [Chronicle coverage]
Washington & Fourth Ave.
» Want more items like this one? Visit the Stopped. Watched. page.
I know this point has already been made, but I’ll reiterate. This will discourage people from parking in structures. The half-hour rounding is dumb enough. With the electronic ticketing system they have in place, and credit card payments, why can’t we pay by the minute? What century are we in?
So one of us needs to print out some signs and post them near the DDA signs that say:
WARNING: 55 minutes will cost $1.10; 65 minutes will cost $2.20.
Re. [1], There is no reason why parking fees cannot be calculated to the minute. This is being done solely to increase revenues. But because you can pay the meters in nickel increments, it will be less costly to park at a meter than in the structure for any amount of time less than 55 minutes. For example, 90 minutes in a structure will cost $2.20, but at a meter it will cost you $1.80.
Given that people can and will make these type of calculations, I wonder how realistic the DDA’s revenue projections are for the change in this policy.
As Ben points out, payment measured to the minute seems within our technological grasp, so that you would pay exactly for the time you use. And that would perhaps help restore the desired price differential between structures and meters to push folks preferentially to seek parking in structures. But of course the perception of cost plays into this as well. The psychology works off the stated rate, not the actual cost that anyone can calculate — hence the suggestion to create signs to highlight the effective rates. So, what if we went the opposite direction with this and instead of rounding up, rounded down? That way, the stated rate would be less than actual cost, and you could market the difference with some kind of catchy slogan: Tree Town Rounds Down. People who park under an hour get out of the structure without paying, i.e, free. Note this would cost parkers more than if the first hour were declared free (1:10 minutes wouldn’t cost you 10 minutes, but rather an hour, on the round-down approach) and would also avoid promoting the idea that “parking is free” [insert Shoup et al here]
But the practical reality is that the 17% of gross that goes to the city of Ann Arbor instead of back into the parking/transportation system makes the Tree Town Rounds Down idea a non-starter. With 2 million hourly patrons a year, that translates into roughly $2 million of lost revenue compared to the rounding-up approach. And $2 million is right in the ballpark (it’s ~$0.7 million less) of that 17% of gross. But your city councilmembers can answer the political question by saying: Hey, it’s the DDA who sets rates, we gave them that right — talk to the DDA. A more accurate answer would be this: Well, we set the policy that went into that contract and we approved it, while threatening the DDA with its dissolution unless the DDA board accepted those terms, so if that 17% policy has a negative impact on the quality of life in our downtown, then yes, it’s fair to blame us.
I’m sure it is more convenient to for the council to blame the DDA than to admit it is using the DDA as an ATM.