Atlanta’s meter is off
Parking meters make sense. Many cities use parking meters to off-set the cost of maintaining streets, paying for police, and to make public improvements in their cities.
However, the city of Atlanta is acting foolishly. Its new parking meters are
massively overpriced. They cost $25 cents for 7.5 minutes!
Compared to local parking garages, which provide shade, security, and are well lit, the meters become counter productive.
As with all resource matters, the key is to garner the largest marginal benefit for the marginal cost. One must make the appropriate laffer curve for the situation. If you charge nothing to park, you’ll reap nothing. If you charge $5 per hour, you’ll also reap nothing. So the answer must be somewhere in between. I believe two dollars per hour is too high.
Why? 1) There are less expensive, higher quality substitutes. 2) One must pay the $2 per hour in nickels, dimes, and quarters. One faces structural problems of payment. Many people don’t have $4 in change for a couple of hours and the
machines fill up very quickly. 3) People generally seem to believe that there is only a small chance of incurring consequences due to enforcement. At such high prices they are willing to flaunt the meter.
The result is that the city makes people angry with the high prices AND reaps less revenue.
The city would be better off lowering the price to either 75c or $1 per hour. People would be able to use the meters more effectively and would feel that the risk associated with flaunting the meters was not worth the cost.
In the mean time, this is one of Mayor Franklin’s few mistakes.
July 3rd, 2004 at 11:10 am
It tickles me that there exists in this town a corner where one can find $2/hour meters on the street adjacent to a parking lot that charges $2/day. It could be argued that there could possibly be a time and place for a $2/hour meter somewhere in the city, but whoever is running the city’s parking meter program must recognize that there should be different pricing for different areas.
It seems to me that the meters initially appeared with 24/7 enforcement. I think some meters have been modified to work-week only enforcement.
Also, note the situation on 5th Street at the new Tech Square development. One side of the street has city-maintained meters, while the other side has meters enforced by GA Tech cops. Guess on which side of the street I park?
May 22nd, 2005 at 9:49 am
Overpriced parking may help the city make money on weekdays but it leaves the city dead evenings and weekends. Downtown should learn from other cities where street parking is free but limited to 2 hours. This brings more people to the city which increses revenues to businesses and government. 2 hours is generally enough time for most people eating or shopping and people spending more than 2 hours are gerally more willing to use a pay deck. They could probably have the Ambassador Force monitor parking instead of city police since businesses would be the primary beneficiaries.