Pay to Park

Memphis drivers may be getting the boot.

City Court Clerk Thomas Long brought the City Council's economic development committee several recommendations this morning, among them electronic pay stations, doubled fines, and the dreaded "boot," which renders a car immobile.



Long told the council the city loses $1.5 to $2 million annually in unpaid parking tickets. Under state law, the statute of limitations for parking tickets is only one year. Because many residents know that fact, they choose not to pay city parking tickets.

"If I park my car downtown and get a ticket, then after that I'll take my car and hide it or do whatever I need to do," Long said. "After one year, why pay?"

Long asked the council to add changing the statute of limitations to its legislative agenda bound for Nashville.

"We need more than one year to collect non-moving violations. The city of New Orleans has 10 years," Long said.

Long was initially not supportive of booting cars but, after research on what other cities do, said he thinks automobiles ought to be subject to booting after 60 days of non-payment.

"Parking tickets are $20. If you don't pay within 30 days, I think it ought to go to $40. If you don't pay within 60 days, I think it should be $80," Long said.

After that time, the vehicle would get the boot for three days. If the owner didn't pay the fee in three days, the car would be taken to a downtown impound lot.

The only exception would be for vehicles that have more than $500 in fines attached to them. Those would get taken straight to impound.

"The 20, 40, 80 seems a little extreme to me," said councilmember Shea Flinn. "If it's too little, people are going to ignore it. If it's too much, people are going to ignore it. We've got to hit the sweet spot."

Long said he wasn't tied to the fee structure, but that he thinks it should be more than $20.

With budget season approaching, the committee asked Long to bring back his top three recommendations.

Parking Minimums

Can cities rethink decades worth of parking doctrine?

MSNBC has a story about how a number of U.S. cities are reconsidering the idea that every building must have a minimum number of parking spaces attached to it.

From the story: "D.C. is now considering scrapping those requirements — part of a growing national trend. Officials hope that offering the freedom to forgo parking will lead to denser, more walkable, transit-friendly development.

Opponents say making parking more scarce will only make the city less hospitable. Commuters like Randy Michael of Catharpin, Va., complain they are already forced to circle for hours in some neighborhoods."

The story opens anecdotally: Jeff Speck and his family don't have a car, don't want one, and had to fight DC zoning regulations for nine months to build their house without one.

(I'm not sure Jeff Speck is an everyman, tho. He was the director of design for the National Endowment of the Arts and collaborated on Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream with Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. He also spoke here earlier this year.)

But he does make a good point when he says this: "Half the great buildings in America's great cities would not be legal to build today under current land use codes. Every house on my block is illegal by current standards, particularly parking standards."

That's one of the reasons OPD was redoing the unified development code, to not hamper an area like Broad Avenue with suburban-like zoning.

But getting back to parking, I remember talking to Henry Turley (who, full disclosure, is one of the Flyer's ownership group) once about parking affects retail development. National retailers mandate a certain number of spaces; you want those retailers, you have to give them their parking lots. (And how often do you see a full parking lot unless it's near Christmas?)

A parking lot. Just in case you've never seen one before.

And not to go all Doug Farr on you again, but he did mention last week that he thought cities would be wise to exchange parking minimums for parking maximums.

Of course, the caveat is that it doesn't work without good transit.