The Wiki Man | 17 May 2008

Those of you who saw his article a few weeks back will be pleased to hear Kelvin MacKenzie took a remarkable second place in his local council elections. Already the climbdown over parking charges has begun: the cost of a day’s parking at Weybridge Station is suddenly not £5 but £4. It’s the same story in my birthplace of Usk, where rebellious townsfolk recently rejected the idea of paying for parking at all — with the result that the car park is invariably full and hence totally useless.

One thing the denizens of Usk and Weybridge clearly share is an unfamiliarity with the work of UCLA Professor Donald Shoup and his masterwork The High Cost of Free Parking. Shoup, an economist and urban planner, attacks not expensive parking but free or cheap parking, claiming it is a hidden subsidy to the motorist which costs the US economy over $200 billion annually — more than is spent on Medicare. As well as squandering road-space, free parking creates demand far in excess of supply, causing motorists to waste time and fuel in the search for elusive vacant bays. A 1980s study showed that in one year alone motorists in a 15-block area of Los Angeles drove the equivalent of two round-trips to the moon in the search for a space, wasting 100,000 hours and 47,000 gallons of petrol in the process. In some areas, 30 per cent of all moving cars are simply looking for somewhere to park.

It is possible both environmentalists and car-lovers might benefit from higher charges for parking, provided other non-behaviour-changing costs (road tax, say) are reduced in step. Certainly it seems ridiculous that Londoners who might pay £75,000 more for a house with an extra 10ft x 9ft bedroom stump up just £115 a year to park a 15ft x 6ft car on the street.