6 ms·

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 a

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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y ago
      Quality over quantity is a nice theory, but a bad idea when allocating public spending.
      - WorldMaker 8y 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.
        village-idiot 8y ago
        Define quality. It's all great to say that quality matters, but you're using an abstract definition of quality while letting everyone fill in their own mental definition of quality. That feels good, but is is a terrible way to actually make the concrete decisions about how the public purse will be used.
        WorldMaker 8y ago
        There was nothing abstract in my definition of quality. I defined quality directly in terms of things that matter to net revenue of local businesses several times in the above posts and gave several examples (such as perceived time pressure versus ability to window shop or impulse buy). I don't see how that is a terrible way to make concrete decisions about public spending, and I'm very not sure why you are arguing that it is. Quality can certainly be defined and optimized for, and that's precisely what I've said, and provided specific examples for. I even admitted that optimizing for quality is hard, but just because something is hard doesn't make it impossible to make concrete decisions about.
        8y ago
  - closeparen 8y ago
    The point of going to a restaurant or coffee shop is the atmosphere / venue for socialization; you would not do it if too tight a timeline were imposed.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      ... which is why they usually pay for their own lots and don't use publicly funded metered parking.
      - perl4ever 8y ago
        Not at a lot of places I go to. I guess a place like Starbucks or McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts almost always (not always!) has a lot, but random restaurants and coffee shops that I go to generally don't.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Even this idea of optimizing for visits over duration is flawed for retail shopping: not everyone has a specific item in mind and only that specific item in mind for a direct in/out purchase decision. So much of marketing is about impulse buys, and so much of consumer decision models are about wrestling with a wall of near but distinct variations of a product for that "perfect" one for a particular shopping. That's before you even get into the social models of retail where people shop together. Retail shopping benefits financially from time/lingering/"experiences" just as well as everything else and optimizing for "visits" maybe optimizing for the wrong things for even retail. Arguably this is exactly part of why retail disappeared from many urban environments because suburban and exurban Malls were better at optimizing for lingering, social experiences in the 70s/80s.
ryanmonroe 8y ago
The idea that parking exists primarily to increase the revenue of business owners seems pretty bleak.
- village-idiot 8y 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 8y ago
    [deleted]
- ghaff 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y ago

closeparen 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y ago
    Quality over quantity is a nice theory, but a bad idea when allocating public spending.
    - WorldMaker 8y 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.
      - village-idiot 8y ago
        Define quality. It's all great to say that quality matters, but you're using an abstract definition of quality while letting everyone fill in their own mental definition of quality. That feels good, but is is a terrible way to actually make the concrete decisions about how the public purse will be used.
        WorldMaker 8y ago
        There was nothing abstract in my definition of quality. I defined quality directly in terms of things that matter to net revenue of local businesses several times in the above posts and gave several examples (such as perceived time pressure versus ability to window shop or impulse buy). I don't see how that is a terrible way to make concrete decisions about public spending, and I'm very not sure why you are arguing that it is. Quality can certainly be defined and optimized for, and that's precisely what I've said, and provided specific examples for. I even admitted that optimizing for quality is hard, but just because something is hard doesn't make it impossible to make concrete decisions about.
        8y ago
- closeparen 8y ago
  The point of going to a restaurant or coffee shop is the atmosphere / venue for socialization; you would not do it if too tight a timeline were imposed.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    ... which is why they usually pay for their own lots and don't use publicly funded metered parking.
    - perl4ever 8y ago
      Not at a lot of places I go to. I guess a place like Starbucks or McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts almost always (not always!) has a lot, but random restaurants and coffee shops that I go to generally don't.
WorldMaker 8y ago
Even this idea of optimizing for visits over duration is flawed for retail shopping: not everyone has a specific item in mind and only that specific item in mind for a direct in/out purchase decision. So much of marketing is about impulse buys, and so much of consumer decision models are about wrestling with a wall of near but distinct variations of a product for that "perfect" one for a particular shopping. That's before you even get into the social models of retail where people shop together. Retail shopping benefits financially from time/lingering/"experiences" just as well as everything else and optimizing for "visits" maybe optimizing for the wrong things for even retail. Arguably this is exactly part of why retail disappeared from many urban environments because suburban and exurban Malls were better at optimizing for lingering, social experiences in the 70s/80s.

ryanmonroe 8y ago

The idea that parking exists primarily to increase the revenue of business owners seems pretty bleak.

village-idiot 8y 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 8y ago
  [deleted]
ghaff 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y ago