(126th in a series of posts on parking)

Dana Grubb is a lifelong resident of the City of Bethlehem who worked 27 years for the City of Bethlehem in the department of community and economic development, as sealer of weights and measures, housing rehabilitation finance specialist, grants administrator, acting director of community and economic development, and deputy director of community development.

Gadfly:

Sara Satullo, “240% jump in parking tickets shows drivers are rolling the dice in Bethlehem, parking authority says.” leheighvalleylive.com, October 1, 2019.

Instead we awaken to media coverage in which the BPA complains about having to do more enforcement. Cry me a river! What the heck is their purpose if they aren’t doing rigorous enforcement. Also, how does anyone know why those who receive tickets overstay their time. Are they surveying every ticket recipient to find out that they’ve thumbed their nose at the meter time limits because fines aren’t high enough? This parking authority is all over the place with their actions and comments.They don’t charge what they should on monthly rates in their garages, yet want higher meter rates and higher fines, which penalizes Bethlehem residents. And, I’m at least happy to see a second consultant , instead of the usual one, weighing in on variable rates, plus it appears that there is overall plenty of public parking in Bethlehem, except at certain times and in a very few areas. We want to be considered walkable in Bethlehem, yet everybody wants to park directly in front of the destination. Very little rhyme or reason at all!

Dana

Gadfly will be posting on the BPA’s appearance at the City Council Public Safety Committee meeting later today.

(125th in a series of posts on parking)

So we said Council is going to consider two topics from the Bethlehem Parking Authority tonight at the Public Safety meeting:

1) increasing the parking fine structure

2) adopting variable rate pricing

We discussed the fines, now variable rate pricing.

Here’s the report on variable rate pricing prepared by the BPA consultant Kimley-Horn:

BPA Variable Rate Memorandum 8-28-19

Right now, Gadfly believes, the meter parking rate of $1.50/hr. is universal — all places, all times — throughout the City whether you are out on West Broad, in front of the Moravian Book Shop, or tasting a dainty at Lit.

Variable rate pricing —also known as demand-responsive pricing, or performance pricing—means setting curbside parking meter rates based on demand in a block or zone at a particular time of day. The goal is to make sure there are always a few open spaces per block and encourage people to park only as long as they need. Theoretically, this arrangement should enable more customers to shop or eat in a business district.

In other words, parking could be cheaper on West Broad than at the Moravian Book Shop or cheaper Tuesday morning at Lit than Friday night.

In other words, a parking space might be worth more on the 500 block of Main St. on a summer Friday evening than it would on a Tuesday morning.

In other words, the same parking space might even cost different prices at different times of the same day.

Get it?

The question is, should the Bethlehem Parking Authority adopt variable rate pricing?

This concept of variable rate parking entered Gadfly’s wordhouse before he was Gadfly, in the middle of 2018 when there was public discussion of the major parking study done by DESMAN for the Bethlehem Parking Authority.

As part of his approval of the increase of parking meter rates that went into effect January 1, 2019, the Mayor requested that the BPA “consider” variable rate pricing. The Mayor was responding to urging by some members of the public and of City Council in doing so.

The corollary and more basic question is, what current problem would variable rate pricing address?

Gadfly is not sure what that problem is.

Gadfly wishes that problem were identified, isolated, and presented for the consultant to specifically address in the report.

As is, we have a general report on variable rate pricing that is not specifically focused on any reason for the inquiry in the first place.

So Gadfly finds it hard to judge the consultant’s report, which does not recommend the City adopt VRP.

Gadfly remembers these things relevant to VRP from that 2018 public discussion:

• criticism that the DESMAN report did not investigate or include the potential application of innovative policies and strategies like VRP when we already had the technology to implement it
• possible usefulness in the Northside downtown
• laments from Westsiders

That said, these sections of the consultant report stood out to Gadfly:

• “While system-wide on-street parking occupancy levels never exceeded 60% and 48% in the Northside and Southside, respectively, occupancy on certain streets and block faces did reach or exceed 85% which is a general measure of parking stress. In Northside, the three blocks bound by East Broad Street, E. Market Street, Main Street, and North New Street had peak weekday occupancy percentages between 75% and 100%. Interestingly, the Walnut Street Garage, which exists within that block and has 777 spaces, only achieved a 69% occupancy rate and had 240 available spaces.”
• “The pattern of peak on-street parking utilization in Southside was erratic with one side of the street exhibiting low occupancy percentages while the other side of the street exhibits high occupancy. The only consistent pattern of parking occupancy was along East Packer Avenue between Vine Street and Ryan Street/Fillmore Street, an area that is clearly influenced by Lehigh University. According to DESMAN’s report (see Lot T and Table 10 from that document), the 602-space parking garage in that location was only 10% utilized during this same period.”
• “Curbside parking is best when managed to serve short duration, high-turnover activity and uses such as retail, restaurant, and theater are particularly dependent on that supply of spaces. In turn, the management and pricing of those spaces is quite relevant.”
• “Regarding meter performance data, the IPS meters do not have the sensor (occupancy/vacancy) feature which further encourages parking compliance, short-duration of stay, and higher turnover through effective enforcement, and the BPA’s sensor puck pilot program did not prove worthwhile. As such, the BPA cannot collect real time data on parking utilization and turnover.”
• “Parking utilization as reported in the 2018 study did identify fourteen (14) of the seventy-two (72) block faces in Southside and five (5) of the forty-one (41) block faces in Northside had occupancy percentages at or above 85% [indicating stress]. But as a system, the two areas achieved only 49% (Southside) and 64% (Northside) occupancy during the peak hour.”

Without a specific problem to address, Gadfly is not sure how to judge the consultant’s conclusion that VRP is not recommended for us:

Based on our review of the Desman report and on our own research conducted as part of this project, Kimley-Horn does not believe that performance-based, dynamic, or progressive on-street parking rates should be implemented at this time. This opinion is based on the fact that curbside utilization is relatively low, there are no large concentrations of intense demand, current monthly and hourly rates are low and offer no variability between on-street and off-street transient rates, and the level of effort and cost required to collect the necessary performance data is prohibitive given the size of the BPA and its budget. The City and BPA could pilot test variable rates based on location and/or time of day for specific streets or blocks but significant surpluses on adjacent streets/blocks and within nearby off-street lots and garage would suggest that the increased rates would simply drive parkers to these other areas of lesser utilization.

Perhaps a pilot program?

Gadfly is just not sure where discussion of this issue will go with Council or if there is an issue here that we should be concerned about.

Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13

(124th in a series of posts on parking)

Fine Recommendation Memo 8.20.19

The July 2 pro forma

Gadfly was expecting disappointment.

So he was not disappointed.

It would have been nice to have awoken this morning to a mailbag full of solutions to the math homework problem he posed yesterday afternoon.

Is there a way to re-vision the mix of meter rates and fines to put the onus on the violators through even heavier fines, while easing the recent meter increase on the law-abiding residents?

Put more simply, the goal was to see if it were feasible to roll the parking meter rates back to $1.00/hr. while voting on a new fine structure:

penalizing the law-breakers,
giving a break to the law-abiders,
and providing the Bethlehem Parking Authority a fair financial shake.

In its proposal linked above, the BPA estimates that their fine recommendations will produce a meter revenue increase of $75,000‐$100,000 annually.

In the “pro forma” the BPA presented at Council July 2, also linked above, that figure for meter revenue increase is $292,378.

Gadfly doesn’t understand the difference (and wonders if he is misunderstanding the chart), but let’s use the higher figure for our mathematizing here.

Now listen up everybody. Let’s see if Gadfly is thinking straight.

Here’s how he states the proposition.

The goal is to keep the meter rate at $1.00/hr. How much would the fine revenue have to be increased to enable that to happen and still produce $292,378 in income for the BPA?

Whew!

Now for some voodoo economics.

Here is an image from the pro forma linked above showing columns from 2018 (when the meter rates were $1.00/hr.) and 2019 (when the meter rates are $1.50/hr.). The 2019 column also shows the proposed fine increase, though it actually hasn’t gone into effect.

The bottom circled section shows the increased meter revenue of $292,378.

The top circled section shows an assumed number of violations as 62,942.

According to Voodoo Gadfly’s thinking, if you divide 62,942 into $292,378, you get the amount you would have to raise the fines on each violation to break even.

$4.645197165644562

(If we used BPA’s lower figure of, say, $100,000 as a target figure instead of almost $300,000 in the pro forma, then presumably the fine increase on each violation would only have to be 1/3 of $4.645197165644562.)

Now Gadfly pauses to see if he gets slapped upside the head for faulty thinking here.

If this thinking passes muster, then the question is would rolling the meter rate back to $1.00/hr. and raising the fine for a meter violation to at most $20 be ok?

BPA is now proposing raising the fine for a meter violation to $15. Would at most $20 be ok or seen as excessive?

Maybe worth a conversation. Gadfly can see arguments on both sides.

Remember this from Desman, the BPA consultant: “Parking industry standards suggest that the fine for non‐payment of a parking meter or other parking meter violations be priced at least 10‐15 times the hourly parking rate.”

The BPA proposal before Council raises the violation rate (from the base of $1.00/hr.) to 15 times the hourly parking rate.

But “at least 10‐15 times” would seem to indicate that at most 20 times wouldn’t cause apoplexy.

Gadfly, of course, may be way, way, way off in his mathematizing here. But his purpose is simply to stir thought about options to the BPA proposal.

The prime reason, says BPA, for raising the rate is that the present fine structure is not a deterrence to bad behavior. A good reason. So let’s punish the bad behaviorers.

To Gadfly, raising the rate because we will not look bad in comparison to our peers is not so good a reason.

Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13