Did the recession change the rules of supply and demand or something?

The Post has an article on how the "influx of residents has placed added strain on the District’s number of on-street parking spaces." It starts with the story of a 26-year-old who had to live car free for a couple of months. “It was definitely doable,” Anderson said of a carless lifestyle. “But, particularly running to the grocery store, it’s a lot easier to do in a car than on a bike. You can carry a lot more stuff with you.” As for the added strain, the story's facts undermine that claim. 

• Officials tally approximately 260,000 on-street parking spaces in the city, a figure they say hasn’t changed significantly in the last decade.
• “In the District, we’ve...seen car ownership decline,” 

So if there are the same number of parking spaces, but fewer cars needing them, why has this placed "added strain" on the number of on-street parking spaces? 

Anyway the article correctly notes that

That’s due in part to the fact that the District has been faster than many cities to adopt new forms of transportation. Beyond the Metrorail and Metrobus systems, the popular Capital Bikeshare program allows members to share bicycles stationed around the city

And then there is this

“The public [road] system is being used as storage,” Rao said. “There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what the street is for."

Is it? Awesome. I'm pulling all my stuff out of my storage unit and putting it in the street. 

But is that the best method for dealing with those precious spaces? I only ask that question.

No. It surely isn't in every case. Some bus lanes and bike lanes could make car use less necessary (thus freeing up parking), increase mobility, improve health and save people a lot of money.

Comments

[SJE]

"[Storage] That's what the street is for"

The public street also used to be for dumping your sewage. We changed that, so we can change using the street for storage

[Read Scott Martin]

triple the price for the second residential parking permit per household, and weekend parking restrictions (cough, churches, cough) would free up a lot of storage

[Jon Renaut]

Tripling the price for a 2nd RPP still doesn't get even close to market rates. We're still massively subsidizing parking, which only leads to a confused market that doesn't respond rationally to changes in supply.

I did a really brief and unscientific search at parkingspotter.com for my zip (20009) and it looks like the range of monthly parking rates is $160-300.

So your $35 RPP permit entitles you to $1920-3600 worth of parking. Even if we look at the low end, since many of these paid spots will be nicer than street parking, we're still looking at a giant subsidy. I'm sure some of your taxes go towards the parking spot in various ways, but those are indirect costs, so they won't do much to influence demand.

If we want to solve DC parking problems, maybe we should let the Tea Party know that the DC government is giving $1500/year in welfare to every single one of its citizens who decides to register a car. That's bound to tick them off, maybe they'll make us change it.