Reply to S/O What should MoCo do about parking in downtown Bethesda

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Things change. A lot of the free surface parking in Bethesda has been converted to underground, paid parking. This will change even more in the coming years when the area behind the cooperative is redeveloped and eventually, I assume, the Stroschneider's strip mall will be redeveloped.

It is what it is, and the businesses will adapt to it.

[/quote]

Underground parking is still parking.  That is a change that properly balances the need for greater density with the continued need for parking.

You say businesses will adapt, but the issue is making good sure customers can get to the businesses.  If customers can't reach the business, the way to adapt is to go online, but online stores don't contribute to a vibrant urban environment.[/quote]

Amazon and the internet have changed retail permanently, and now our physical development is adapting to it. Underground parking is still parking. Maybe Baby Boomers demand free and open parking on demand, but the rest of us understand that parking has costs, and they need to be paid, either by the County, the property owner or the consumer, or some combination of all 3.[/quote]

I don't disagree with that.

In terms of Amazon/the internet, it has changed retail and made it I much more difficult environment to survive, leading to a lot of vacancies in many areas, including downtown Bethesda.  Because I think we all believe an active retain segment is beneficial for a variety of reasons, policymakers should be wary of taking even further measures that will harm the retail sector -- such as significantly reducing parking.  That doesn't mean that there should be plentiful, free, surface lots -- not all.  But it does mean not substantially reducing parking or making parking expenses enough so that most people will not use it.  (Exactly where that line can be debated.)[/quote]

I'm a newcomer to the Bethesda area, and was shocked that MoCo doesn't charge for parking on weekends.  Seems like a lost opportunity for additional revenue (it doesn't have to be expensive, 1-2$/hr).[/quote]

The question is would enough people avoid Bethesda if they did that so that a) you would ultimately lose $ in tax revenue and b) hurt the overall vibe in the area.

$1-2 dollars per hour isn't a ton and many people would simply accept it.  But I think more than you might expect would limit (both in #s of visit and duration) weekend trips.  If you collect $4 in parking, but lose sales tax on a family's lunch and afternoon shopping, you don't come out ahead even in purely economic terms.

I don't know how this would play out in practice and I am not necessarily saying this is a bad idea, but it is important to consider how people will react to these changes, particularly when lots of people coming to Bethesda can easily get to Va or DC to spend their money.[/quote]

But MD is the outlier not the norm on this.  There is virtually no free parking in DC unless you find a scarce spot on the street and there is also almost no free parking in Northern Virginia either.  Even Fairfax county is strongly moving towards charging for parking in high demand neighborhoods.

But as I pointed out up thread parking in Bethesda is not hard - specifically it is just the Bethesda Row garage that is hard to find a parking spot in.  Montgomery County could just charge for that high demand garage and leave the others free to incentivize people to walk the couple of blocks or go out in other parts of Bethesda.

And if they did that they'd reduce the wasted time and gas.

But this is Bethesda which is the global capital of the clueless and entitled so I'm sure there would be howls of protest about charging people with HHI's of 200K and up driving 40K+ cars all proclaiming their concerns about global warming $5 to park for the night.[/quote]

Your ridiculous swipe at Bethesda detracts from an otherwise reasonable suggestion.  If one lot is substantially more popular than others, it may make sense to require payment for that lot while allowing free parking in slightly less convenient spots.  That's what they already do with street parking on Saturday.  If you want the convenience of street parking you have to pay, or you can park for free in a lot/garage.

As for VA and DC, it depends on where and when you are talking.  I have virtually never had to pay to park on a weekend in VA and even in DC can often find free parking when zone restrictions are loosened.

But let's say you are right that MoCo is the outlier with free parking on the weekends.  That means it currently has a comparative advantage that encourages people to come to Bethesda.  Losing that would, at least to some degree, disincentivise people from coming to Bethesda.  I've never said this concern should necessarily win out when various issues are collectively considered, but it absolutely should be part of the analysis.[/quote]

You should learn about an economic concept called marginal costs.  For someone going to Bethesda to eat at one of its expensive restaurants or shop at its overpriced retail, a few dollars for parking will not be a substantial factor in this decision-making.[/quote]

And you should learn to not be so smug, particularly since you know next to nothing about behavioral economics.  If you did, you would realize that people make all sorts of decisions that don't make sense on purely economic grounds.

Many people have a visceral dislike for paying for parking and will go to great lengths to avoid it, even when those lengths have greater opportunity costs than paying for parking.  So, even though an extra $5 dollars in parking arguably shouldn't matter to someone about to spend $150 on dinner, for some people it will.  You also ignore that people will be less likely to come in for smaller purchases where the marginal cost of the parking is more substantial.  But, quite often once people are in a shopping area that make larger/more purchases than they intended -- purchases that wouldn't occur if they are deterred from coming in the first instance.[/quote]

Just because you got your economics degree from Trump University doesn’t make you a guru of behavioral economics.  You have no evidence that the revenue lost due to people who “don’t like to pay a few dollars to parking when they go out for a 150$ dinner” would be substantial enough to outweigh the revenue MoCo would gain by charging for a public service that most jurisdictions charge for.  Drop us a line when you set up a rigorous evaluation of  about the impact of the policy change that includes a good way to identify the counterfactual.[/quote]

Yale, but thanks for playing.  You should also go back to the multiple posts where I said that these considerations needed to be part of the analysis -- not that I was claiming to have definitively determined that the lost revenue would outweigh amounts raised in parking.  If you have done the analysis showing how this would play out, please feel free to share it.

Plus, revenue is only one factor. If a small increase in revenue leads to a more substantial decrease in the vibrancy of the area, that may very well be worth it. [/quote]

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