At any downtown Austin conference, particularly a conference attended by out-of-towners, one invariably hears complaints about the lack of parking. Downtown retailers complain, too. As do weekend shoppers and bar hoppers. I attended a CLE land-use seminar a few weeks ago and one of the city planners touted the benefits of establishing maximum parking limits (as opposed to the minimum parking limits we have now). That one statement generated more discussion -- heated at that -- than the rest of the presentations put together.
But downtown is brimming with parking. There are six multi-level parking garages in the small area bounded by 6th, Guadalupe, 10th and Colorado. I know because I'm staring at them and their unused, roof-top parking spaces.
I would be surprised if downtown doesn't have plenty of excess parking. Our city code mandates excess parking. While lots of buildings were built before code-required parking, they are small.
So why do we have a parking problem when we have excess capacity? One possibility is that it is a pain in the ass to open a private garage to the public unless there is enough excess capacity to make it worth the trouble. My building's parking garage is open to the public, but it has lots of excess capacity. There are garages, though, with just 40-50 empty spots; it's not cost-effective to set up a booth and attendant for just a few spots.
There are problems on the demand side, too. Nothing keeps employers from renting space for their employees -- employers know who their employees are and capture the benefits of giving their employees a place to park. It's a different story for retailers and bars, though. If I'm a retailer, I can rent space for my customers but nothing prevents my customers from hopping around to other stores. Other stores will freeload off my investment. Consequently, no one does anything, and excess parking within walking distance remains locked up.
If this is the problem, then the solution is for the city to step in to match supply and demand. The city might charge retailers a monthly parking fee which it could use to rent excess parking. Or the city could create a mandatory retailers' association to do the same thing. Freeloading problem solved.
But maybe there really is a shortage of parking. My birds-eye survey isn't very scientific. A true shortage of parking calls for a different solution.
This issue can't be resolved abstractly. We need data. I'd like to see the city take a census of downtown parking. We need to know how many parking spots there are downtown and precisely where they are. We also need to know each garage's average and peak occupancy. Only then can we diagnose and solve the problem.
If the City has already completed this kind of detailed census, I'd appreciate a pointer. The City's been floating the idea of building public garages downtown so perhaps it has. I haven't seen it, though.
And yes, I know that some will argue that the shortage of parking is good because it encourages bus ridership. This deserves a separate post, but my take is that we're after the marginal downtown visitor -- the one who would visit if there were parking but who will not take the bus. I assume that garages will charge for downtown parking even if the coordination problem is solved (I hope so) and that visitors who don't want to pay for or fool with parking will still take the bus. An extra parking space does not automatically mean one less bus rider.
Update: M1EK points me to this study.
