On Tuesday evening, Palo Alto City Council will be considering paid parking for the downtown, replacing the color zone system dating back to the 1990s; and considering a new parking garage downtown.
The garage item is first up at 7:05, and the parking management (including paid parking) is up at 8:30.
Other nearby downtowns with paid visitor parking are thriving, including Redwood City, San Mateo, and Burlingame, and Mountain View is currently exploring paid visitor parking.
In today’s market, customers have shown that they are willing to pay for a convenient spot.  As in Redwood City and San Mateo, pricing can be designed and refined so spots depended on for retail turn over more quickly.
However, while the city is considering paid parking, they are still considering hard limits on the amount of time a visitor can park, today’s parking technology allows visitors to pay with a mobile device without having to run out to the car to feed the meter.  To encourage spots to turn over, the city could set the price to increase after the first couple of hours, so customers who want to stay for a meeting and shopping can pay to stay without getting a ticket.
Now that the residential parking permit system no longer allows downtown neighborhood streets to be used as a free parking lot, the color system provides an incentive for workers to move their cars from color zone to color zone in order to park for free, using spaces that would otherwise be used for customers.
A fair price on parking would also help workers make balanced commute choices. Currently in Palo Alto’s downtown, the monthly price of a parking permit is only a third to a quarter the price of a Caltrain monthly pass. In Cal Ave, the price of a worker permit is only a tenth the price of a Caltrain pass, and downtown, the price of a worker permit is a third to a quarter the cost of a Caltrain pass. Currently, Palo Alto’s employee permit prices are strongly encouraging workers to drive, adding to traffic congestion.
In addition, the minimum permit that can be purchased is three full months, while a day pass costs $17. This pricing structure encourages employees to drive every day, even if they have options other than driving that they could use part of the time.Meanwhile, the city is starting to see early success from Palo Alto’s Transportation Management Association with successful small-scale pilot programs to reduce driving at a budget of $100,000 per year.  But the TMA does not yet have enough funding to reduce trips at a larger scale, and the TMA is not yet providing service to the Cal Ave area.
Funding from parking could be used to fund the TMA:
* Implementing paid short term parking
* Setting the price of full-price worker parking to be competitive with a Caltrain pass
* Implementing paid short term parking
* Setting the price of full-price worker parking to be competitive with a Caltrain pass
The revenue from short-term parking and better-designed employee permits could pay for Caltrain passes, shuttles, Lyft credits, ZipCar passes, and other benefits to help workers get to their jobs without driving.  (A ZipCar pass would allow workers to go to a meeting or run errands during the day without having to drive to work) By balancing the incentives, Palo Alto would be able to reduce traffic and parking demand, improve quality of life, and help the city achieve its sustainability goals.
As readers may know, using parking revenue to fund the Marguerite shuttles and related TDM programs is a key secret to Stanford’s success in substantially reducing driving for its workers.
Of course, these programs won’t work for everyone – given the region’s land use and people’s lives, many people will continue to need to drive for good reasons. But with a better balance of incentives, more people would shift, reducing traffic on the roads and alleviating demand on the available parking.
For low-income workers, the city has already created a discount pricing tier of $100 per year, and could further help by allowing shorter purchase periods, and perhaps by setting lower prices for further away lots. Â Workers are already tempted to park for free on the street in further out neighborhoods, so more convenient discount parking could be helpful.
The discussion on Tuesday will bring out people who still believe that free parking is essential for downtown to drive customers, and deeply subsidized parking is essential for for workers. If you think differently, do come if you can.
If you live or work in Palo Alto, or visit as a customer, you can help Council make decisions to move ahead with paid parking and use of parking revenues to help reduce traffic and parking demand.
And please share with others who might be interested to talk at the meeting (especially) or write to the council.
