Alternatives to parking help transits fare box recovery

Notice the in-lieu fee of $9,000 collected for the past three years in San Mateo is insufficient for a parking lot. The city only has $1.5 million. Business wants the parking and pollution. but is refusing to pay for the parking lot.

The number provided in the article “City on quest for parking garage” in the Nov. 2 edition of the Daily Journal for a parking spot, of $30,000 is really low. A parking spot is 10 feet by 18 feet which equals 180 square feet. At $100 per square foot for unimproved land in San Mateo the spot would cost $18,000.

However a parking spot by itself is useless. You also need to be able to access it. Access lanes and street space dedicated to get to parking spots raises the size of the spot to 300-350 square feet. This is similar to the size used when building off-street parking.

You can see that with a little common sense, the $30,000 price is already at the low end for unimproved land. And we haven’t added in the percent of the $30 million publics works and planning budgets for a year for street and sewer maintenance and other issues like stormwater runoff, system overload and sewer leakage, associated with un-permeable streets and parking surfaces; or police and fire services for crashes downtown, or the markup for built structures that typically come in after the land costs exceed $1 million like the movie garage on Second and B streets. My neighbor was hit at Third and B streets and had his bike crushed and his tailbone broken. My guess is the real price is more than $44,000.

Notice the public handout for drivers to take away the fare box recovery of Caltrain and SamTrans or bike access to the downtown is closer to $35,000 per spot and the city is willing to take away local recreation access like the tennis court to get it. What price do you put on an athletic club membership? What’s the price of the quality of downtown life that has been privatized away? What is the price of asthma downtown? These are called external costs. A EU study said that they are typically two more for every one real dollar.

Instead of looking at other funding options, the city needs to put a fair price on parking — like Redwood City — to give residents real options and return their quality of life. An air quality grant from the Cities/County Association of Governments can get a delivery program started for merchant downtown, taking away the need to drive. You can maintain delivery with a parking assessment district. Such a district can also be used to get to zero traffic housing.

Do you know the price of in lieu parking in your city? San Carlos is $7,000. And the Chamber of Commerce complained to me that the cost of bicycle parking amounted to $4.55 at the Arts and Wine festival. Belmont is zero.

This article was printed in the San Mateo Daily Journal
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=83116&eddate=11/09/2007