Jake Young is a 
Here is a clever idea for making sure you never have to search for a parking space: congestion pricing. San Francisco is trying out a system based on this principle:
The SFpark project will begin early in 2009 with a new network of pavement sensors in 6,000 of San Francisco's metered parking spaces and 11,500 of its off-street car parks and garages. These sensors will detect when a space is taken and relay that information to a central database. From there, information about vacant parking spots will pass to drivers in several ways. The most basic will be through a network of road signs that will indicate areas with parking places. Eventually, however, officials want to provide web and mobile phone services that display the availability of parking block by block on a colour-coded map, much like the traffic maps now offered by Google.The city also plans to make parking metres capable of two-way communications. This will allow them to accept credit and debit card payments, seek maintenance and (perhaps to less acclaim) alert Lovely Rita when a parking ticket needs to be issued. Crucially, such metres can also be changed remotely to charge different rates according to demand at different times of the day. "If you get the price right, nobody will have to cruise," adds Dr Shoup.
More on the SFPark project here.
Having tried to park in SF over several years, I can tell you that parking is a problem. And I didn't even have to commute there. The idea of finding a space on weekdays makes me shudder. No wonder lots of people bike.
I think the key aspect to this plan is information distribution about parking space availability. It won't do anyone any good to create a parking space surplus by raising meter rates only to have no one know about it.
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I'll be interested to see the reaction to congestion pricing. Assuming low enough costs for information gathering, which technology can generally be made to provide, congestion pricing is one of those very neat market-allocation-will-solve-the-problem situations. On the other hand, the notion of what is effectively a public resource being rationed according to ability to pay will definitely sit ill with some people. Since there aren't enough spaces, they'll end up being rationed one way or another; but luck and timing, while inefficient, do feel more egalitarian. After all, Dr. Shoup's optimistic statement at the end is essentially saying "If enough people can't afford parking spaces, there will be enough parking spaces for those who can to park without waiting."
It'll be interesting to see which version wins out in public opinion.
Posted by: phisrow | September 18, 2008 6:34 PM
A while back I wrote about a similar idea (here)
In this case, the idea was raising street parking rates to align them with off-street parking-lot rates. The idea was to hit an 85/15 balance: 85% of spots occupied indicating they're well-used and 15% empty spots, ensuring you won't be driving around forever trying to find one. An interesting idea on the surface, but still not escaping phisrow's "public resource being rationed according to ability to pay".
Still, there was some interesting commentary on that thread.
Posted by: Kamel | September 18, 2008 8:40 PM