Interesting, but I'm partial to the idea used in San Francisco -- transit first. This limits the amount of available parking and offers what little there is there for free. (On the street. The few garages are EXTREMELY expensive.) My own hometown in suburban Chicago had all free parking paid for by the downtown merchants associations. Somehow, this worked. I personally am not a big fan of meters. Only Berkeley had meters in the Bay Area -- and those were the high tech one-meter-per-six-spaces type, which accepted dollar bills. Bethesda drives me crazy with all of its meters and all of them coin operated and without a bill changer in site. And the limited parking times. I spend more time going back and forth to my car, which means I then am likely to drive it (even if only a few blocks) to my next destination).
I am a huge proponent of transit, and I diss my Michigan heritage by over-promoting other modes of transportation at the expense of the car, but commercial districts need to accommodate parking, especially if want them to thrive, and dedicated transit lanes and rights of way often have a barren look-deadening effect.
I think the way to get around this is by rethinking how we deliver transit, more neighborhood-like feeder routes, dropping people off to higher speed lines that are more direct with fewer stops, but not necessarily BRT.
This is something I mentioned in the Q&A. Jeff Tumlin had some important things to say about it, that he thinks that our region, or at least DC, has too many routes and that by cutting-reformulating routes and jiggering around service levels, more time efficient travel serving more riders can be produced.
Yes, I particularly like point 1... with Portland's computer ticket system, you could institute demand based parking prices based on the time of day to achieve the goal of always having about 1 space open.
You would want to have a large lighted sign visible to drivers so they would know the price/hour before they stopped their car.
If the commputer knew WHICH spaces were occupied you could adjust the price upward as the supply decreased... and downward as it decreased, on a minute by minute basis. The economist in me loves that, but something tells me the public won't.
Commenting by HaloScan
