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For what it's worth: Palo Alto already tracks parking electronically. The good part of this is that you can't just repark in a different space to avoid a ticket

For what it's worth: Palo Alto already tracks parking electronically. The good part of this is that you can't just repark in a different space to avoid a ticket; this encourages people to have a real plan for the entire time they need parking. Perhaps the US government or the states should enact data retention laws to ensure stuff gets purged in order to avoid the downsides of a surveillance state.

pmiller2 7y ago
Palo Alto’s system is very successful at keeping me out of Palo Alto, and I think that’s actually the point. There’s nothing I can think of that in Palo Alto that’s worth dealing with their parking situation.
aidos 7y ago
This stuff can be a pain though. I drop my daughter off at a club on Saturday mornings. I need to pay for parking for an hour, even though I only need 10 minutes but then I can’t return for 2 hours. So actually, I need to pay for 2 hours upfront so I can come back to collect later.
- village-idiot 7y ago
  You're in the minority where it affects you negatively. The main purpose of street front parking meters, aside from revenue, is to encourage people to get in and get out. Parking is a limited resource designed to support local businesses, whose revenue scales with the number of visits, not their duration.
  - closeparen 7y ago
    This assumes that the purpose of a visit is retail shopping, which is in decline. Downtown use is shifting towards experiences (restaurants, coffee shops, etc) where lingering a while is an essential feature.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      The statement you are responding to does not assume the purpose of a visit is retail shopping. It doesn't matter what kind of business it is, it needs to make sufficient revenue, and unless the businesses start charging for lingering, they need to ensure enough customers are able to patronize the business to keep it going.
      - WorldMaker 7y ago
        The point is a quantity over quality thing. People that linger/feel free to take their time are more likely to spend more in a lot of business classes. Optimizing for quantity of people spending money may be suboptimal for total revenue if each individual person spends less because they feel time pressured / aren't allowed to "window shop" / etc.
        village-idiot 7y ago
        Quality over quantity is a nice theory, but a bad idea when allocating public spending.
        WorldMaker 7y ago
        I'm not sure I even understand what your point is now. Public spending tries to account for quality all the time. Quality "metrics" of various sorts exist in lots of places and can always be evaluated (or found, then evaluated, as may often need to be the case) when making trade-offs. In the case of public parking, there are ways to improve "quality" by reducing overall parking pressure at specific locations by "moving" it to other areas, such as park-and-ride combinations with public transportation, improving access to site-to-site ground transportation (bicycles, scooters, wheelchairs, segways, what have you), and just improved public transportation in general. Quantity is often an easier metric to optimize for because it's always a number, but that's all the more reason for public spending to find ways to do the hard thing and optimize for quality. That's why we elect people to work on hard problems and care so much about public spending.
  - ryanmonroe 7y ago
    The idea that parking exists primarily to increase the revenue of business owners seems pretty bleak.
    - village-idiot 7y ago
      It’s not like parking is this beautiful stuff you’d like to have around, eh? Of course parking serves the purpose of whatever it’s next to.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - ghaff 7y ago
      What other function would it serve in a retail area? I suppose you could argue that its direct purpose is to allow people who do not live within walking distance to visit and spend time. But unless local businesses profit from that visiting, they're not going to be in business for long and there won't be any reason for people to go there.
      - rrix2 7y ago
        30 years ago we could say the purpose is simply to "exist in the public space of my community", but the demand for constantly increasing revenue from any and all space has effectively destroyed that.
        village-idiot 7y ago
        You’re joking right? We’ve never had parking just because. It’s always been there to serve the needs of whatever it’s next to. In the case of retail, it’s to support the shops, period. We’ve had mechanically metered parking since the 1940s, and manually paid for parking before that. Something has to pay for all that concrete.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > The main purpose of street front parking meters, aside from revenue, is to encourage people to get in and get out That's not a purpose aside from revenue, that's a mechanism for increasing sales, property, and/or income tax revenue, depending on the particular tax regime in the locality.
    - cjensen 7y ago
      If you want a walkable downtown, you need to keep the stores alive, which means they need revenue. Especially true in a place like Palo Alto with its crazy rent prices.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        IF you want a walkable downtown you need people to have a reason to walk. Once someone is in their car it isn't a big deal to get back in my car to drive to the next place - you see this all the time in strip malls where people drive to the next store. Keeping people from getting into the car in the first place is key. That means you need to focus downtown first on the people who live there. Outsiders who don't live downtown are welcome to come too, but if you make their needs the focus you kill downtown.
        village-idiot 7y ago
        Car shoppers are the least valuable shoppers by far. They spend less and they demand more public spending in their support. You can downvote all you want, but it's been researched. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/12/cyclists-and-pedestrians-can-end-spending-more-each-month-drivers/4066/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/12/cyclists-and-... https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/study-shows-people-who-walk-and-bike-main-streets-spend-40-percent-more-people-who-drive.html https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/study-shows-people-w... https://www.bishopstonsociety.org.uk/bishopston/amenities/1155-pedestrians-spend-more https://www.bishopstonsociety.org.uk/bishopston/amenities/11...
        perl4ever 7y ago
- ThrustVectoring 7y ago
  You might not need to pay for parking because you might not be parking per se. The california definition of parking: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=463 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection... >“Park or parking” shall mean the standing of a vehicle, whether occupied or not, otherwise than temporarily for the purpose of and while actually engaged in loading or unloading merchandise or passengers. As long as you're physically engaged in loading or unloading merchandise or passengers, your car is standing but not parking. If you only need to drop off your child and don't need to escort her inside, you shouldn't be forced to pay for parking.
larkeith 7y ago
> The good part of this is that you can't just repark in a different space to avoid a ticket This is weird to me. Is parking time a per day thing instead of per instance - e.g. if I park for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, would it violate a 3-hour parking space? If not, what's the criteria for being "not parked", if getting in and driving your vehicle to another spot isn't it - would around the block count?
- cjensen 7y ago
  Palo Alto uses a clearly marked zone system. So the two hours per day is per zone.
  - larkeith 7y ago
    Huh. I guess that makes sense, it's just quite unfamiliar to me.
  - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
    In my city it is per block face. So you can go around the corner and park again. Except that you can't because we have no meters so all the parking is full all the time.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > Is parking time a per day thing instead of per instance - e.g. In many cities, it's a certain time limit in a certain geographic zone within a particular time window (e.g., 1 hour in a 2 hour window in a set of adhat blocks) that either hits a hard limit or (where tiered pricing is used) a higher price/time tier.

pmiller2 7y ago

Palo Alto’s system is very successful at keeping me out of Palo Alto, and I think that’s actually the point. There’s nothing I can think of that in Palo Alto that’s worth dealing with their parking situation.

aidos 7y ago

This stuff can be a pain though. I drop my daughter off at a club on Saturday mornings. I need to pay for parking for an hour, even though I only need 10 minutes but then I can’t return for 2 hours. So actually, I need to pay for 2 hours upfront so I can come back to collect later.

village-idiot 7y ago
You're in the minority where it affects you negatively. The main purpose of street front parking meters, aside from revenue, is to encourage people to get in and get out. Parking is a limited resource designed to support local businesses, whose revenue scales with the number of visits, not their duration.
- closeparen 7y ago
  This assumes that the purpose of a visit is retail shopping, which is in decline. Downtown use is shifting towards experiences (restaurants, coffee shops, etc) where lingering a while is an essential feature.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    The statement you are responding to does not assume the purpose of a visit is retail shopping. It doesn't matter what kind of business it is, it needs to make sufficient revenue, and unless the businesses start charging for lingering, they need to ensure enough customers are able to patronize the business to keep it going.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      The point is a quantity over quality thing. People that linger/feel free to take their time are more likely to spend more in a lot of business classes. Optimizing for quantity of people spending money may be suboptimal for total revenue if each individual person spends less because they feel time pressured / aren't allowed to "window shop" / etc.
      - village-idiot 7y ago
        Quality over quantity is a nice theory, but a bad idea when allocating public spending.
        WorldMaker 7y ago
        I'm not sure I even understand what your point is now. Public spending tries to account for quality all the time. Quality "metrics" of various sorts exist in lots of places and can always be evaluated (or found, then evaluated, as may often need to be the case) when making trade-offs. In the case of public parking, there are ways to improve "quality" by reducing overall parking pressure at specific locations by "moving" it to other areas, such as park-and-ride combinations with public transportation, improving access to site-to-site ground transportation (bicycles, scooters, wheelchairs, segways, what have you), and just improved public transportation in general. Quantity is often an easier metric to optimize for because it's always a number, but that's all the more reason for public spending to find ways to do the hard thing and optimize for quality. That's why we elect people to work on hard problems and care so much about public spending.
- ryanmonroe 7y ago
  The idea that parking exists primarily to increase the revenue of business owners seems pretty bleak.
  - village-idiot 7y ago
    It’s not like parking is this beautiful stuff you’d like to have around, eh? Of course parking serves the purpose of whatever it’s next to.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - ghaff 7y ago
    What other function would it serve in a retail area? I suppose you could argue that its direct purpose is to allow people who do not live within walking distance to visit and spend time. But unless local businesses profit from that visiting, they're not going to be in business for long and there won't be any reason for people to go there.
    - rrix2 7y ago
      30 years ago we could say the purpose is simply to "exist in the public space of my community", but the demand for constantly increasing revenue from any and all space has effectively destroyed that.
      - village-idiot 7y ago
        You’re joking right? We’ve never had parking just because. It’s always been there to serve the needs of whatever it’s next to. In the case of retail, it’s to support the shops, period. We’ve had mechanically metered parking since the 1940s, and manually paid for parking before that. Something has to pay for all that concrete.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > The main purpose of street front parking meters, aside from revenue, is to encourage people to get in and get out That's not a purpose aside from revenue, that's a mechanism for increasing sales, property, and/or income tax revenue, depending on the particular tax regime in the locality.
  - cjensen 7y ago
    If you want a walkable downtown, you need to keep the stores alive, which means they need revenue. Especially true in a place like Palo Alto with its crazy rent prices.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      IF you want a walkable downtown you need people to have a reason to walk. Once someone is in their car it isn't a big deal to get back in my car to drive to the next place - you see this all the time in strip malls where people drive to the next store. Keeping people from getting into the car in the first place is key. That means you need to focus downtown first on the people who live there. Outsiders who don't live downtown are welcome to come too, but if you make their needs the focus you kill downtown.
      - village-idiot 7y ago
        Car shoppers are the least valuable shoppers by far. They spend less and they demand more public spending in their support. You can downvote all you want, but it's been researched. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/12/cyclists-and-pedestrians-can-end-spending-more-each-month-drivers/4066/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/12/cyclists-and-... https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/study-shows-people-who-walk-and-bike-main-streets-spend-40-percent-more-people-who-drive.html https://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/study-shows-people-w... https://www.bishopstonsociety.org.uk/bishopston/amenities/1155-pedestrians-spend-more https://www.bishopstonsociety.org.uk/bishopston/amenities/11...
        perl4ever 7y ago
ThrustVectoring 7y ago
You might not need to pay for parking because you might not be parking per se. The california definition of parking: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=463 http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection... >“Park or parking” shall mean the standing of a vehicle, whether occupied or not, otherwise than temporarily for the purpose of and while actually engaged in loading or unloading merchandise or passengers. As long as you're physically engaged in loading or unloading merchandise or passengers, your car is standing but not parking. If you only need to drop off your child and don't need to escort her inside, you shouldn't be forced to pay for parking.

larkeith 7y ago

> The good part of this is that you can't just repark in a different space to avoid a ticket This is weird to me. Is parking time a per day thing instead of per instance - e.g. if I park for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, would it violate a 3-hour parking space? If not, what's the criteria for being "not parked", if getting in and driving your vehicle to another spot isn't it - would around the block count?

cjensen 7y ago
Palo Alto uses a clearly marked zone system. So the two hours per day is per zone.
- larkeith 7y ago
  Huh. I guess that makes sense, it's just quite unfamiliar to me.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  In my city it is per block face. So you can go around the corner and park again. Except that you can't because we have no meters so all the parking is full all the time.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> Is parking time a per day thing instead of per instance - e.g. In many cities, it's a certain time limit in a certain geographic zone within a particular time window (e.g., 1 hour in a 2 hour window in a set of adhat blocks) that either hits a hard limit or (where tiered pricing is used) a higher price/time tier.