Parking Charges Survey Results, etc, July 22, 2008

If you haven’t taken the survey already, you can still take it at:

·          http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=E9P3XwbPXY1FLxgDYR9nvg_3d_3d

You can view survey results at:

·          http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=wJriO4GIU8ZAzsAAeHKyc3l4XSFMBrMoXqIlIgct_2bGc_3d

Three main conclusions

• Will employer objections make it impossible for employers to implement cashout + charges? We’ve heard this from commute staff at four big tech companies.  To make conclusions stronger, there is still hope that one employer will allow a broad sample of employees to take the survey to help draw out conclusions. 
• As it stands, the “working conclusion” is that employers won’t volunteer to implement this scheme. Hence, a “good cop / bad cop” scheme is needed to bring the policy about.  The CA Climate Action Team, acting as the bad cop, should phase in a $6 per day office parking tax with “implementation flexibility.” The flexibility should allow employers, acting as good cops, to offer the far more palatable cashout + charge scheme.  A state mandate eliminates the divisiveness between Green Team employees and small government employees. 
• There is also the lesser implementation issue of cheating on self-reporting. Cities21 believes that $0.25 per day parking charges (with $1 cashout) can be successfully implemented via self reporting. Further, Cities21 believes that low-cost automation solutions will naturally arise if the policy spreads widely and especially if tech companies are some of the first adopters.  

Next Steps (suggestions welcomed)

• Convince one employer to allow an employee survey. If no company will help out, attempt a “broadcast” survey. One target is “Mr. Roadshow” at San Jose Mercury News, a transportation/traffic reporter with a lively chat following. (If the survey results make a case for the policy at a particular company, persuade that company to pioneer the policy.)
• Persuade a well-connected organization to take over the advocacy effort.  If this is impossible, present results to CA Climate Team. 
• Publish academic paper in hopes that someone will pick up the idea and run with it 
• Ask for agendized discussion by TRB Parking Sub-Committee in January
• When in SoCal, meet with Don Shoup and Century City employers

Policy recap:

• Start with $0.25 per day employee parking charges and $1.00 per day employee cashout.  A cashout is where the employer pays employees not to park at the office.   
• Employees are assured that all parking charge revenue goes to fund cashout.
• Charges and cashout increase gradually over time (to $2.00 and $4.00 per day) as other companies adopt the same program, ensuring that no Human Resources (HR) recruiting/retention disadvantage is created.
• Implement monthly employee reporting via a trust-based, self-reporting HR web applet (one Bay Area company uses this approach).  Incorporate other employer commute benefits into this monthly reporting (Commuter Check - pre-tax transit passes, private WiFi express bus service, etc) to ensure that “double benefits” are not provided to employees. Self-reporting makes implementation very low-cost for employers. The company reports that 20% of employees are under-collecting the cashout.
• Position “cashout + parking charges” as part of a comprehensive employer commute reduction program.  Educate employees about the unique behavior-changing/demand-reducing properties of parking charges (23% commute mode shift is expected).  Besides reducing CO2, this scheme will: a) ease severe parking shortages at some office campuses, b) create real-estate in-fill opportunities (by permanently reducing cars parked at offices, this scheme enables smart new in-fill on land that was considered to be "built out"), and c) motivate cities to reduce parking maximums for new office development.  
• Parking spaces take up valuable land.  Employers have to pay for parking space land used by drivers.  Employers save money when workers commute via green alternatives (transit, car/van pool, bike, walk, and telecommute) that do not require land for cars.  Hence, Bay Area employers provide a hidden $7.59 daily subsidy to SOV commuters. This cashout + charges scheme reduces land consumption, increasing the economic efficiency of employers.  Further, the current policy of subsidizing SOV commuting harms the environment.   
• Cities are hard-pressed to meet climate protection and traffic reduction objectives.  Because the cashout + charges scheme is so very effective compared to other policies, cities should reward employers that provide leadership on this scheme.  "Charging for parking is the single most effective strategy to encourage people to use alternatives to the SOV" - Jeff Tumlin, Nelson Nygaard Associates.   
• Many companies and cities can cooperate to spread cashout + charges nationwide, reducing 51.7M tons CO2 per year.  No credible plan exists to achieve Kyoto 2020 or California AB32 2020 CO2 reduction targets without large demand reduction such as cashout + charges.  

Survey Objectives were met

• The survey used essay text fields as a poor man’s focus group to collect informative qualitative data. Quantitatively, the distribution of ratings is very interesting, but the respondent sample was biased by the listservs chosen and self-selection within those listservs. 
• The complicated survey instrument was successful in taking respondents through a complicated policy debate in 10 minutes.  48 out of 55 respondents completed questions 1-5.
• The essay responses provide a wealth of information:
  • special cases that must be addressed for successful implementation
  • suggestions (and sharp criticisms) that will improve the next version of the survey
  • identification of information “gaps” that need further explanation (sorry, the survey will get slightly longer)
  • compelling anecdotes from the extremes of the spectrum, for employers to ponder in considering the issue's divisiveness. 
• In contrast to surveymonkey, interactive human research would have allowed some respondent questions/objections/over-thinking to have been addressed, which would then allow some respondents to take their analysis farther.
• Survey objectives can be found at: http://www.cities21.org/paidParkingSrvyObj.htm

Survey responses by listserv:

Question by question conclusions

Question 2: quarter charge + dollar reward

• Modify the Page 2 pro/con section to explain that the largest commute mode shift will typically be to carpooling (not transit).
• Implementation: Address spillover parking (for large office parks with adjacent residential, implement residential parking permits with high enough permit prices to cover implementation costs).
• In FAQ: Q: Won’t 2 employees drive separately, meet 3 blocks from work, park 1 car, and then carpool the rest of the way? Won’t some employees put a bike on their car’s bike rack, park their car at a location close to work, and then bike in from there? A: This cheating might occur, but such cheating can be expected to be much less of an issue than potential cheating issues with web-based self-reporting.

Question 4 - $2 charge + $4 reward

• Implementation: Develop exceptions for swing and graveyard shift workers. 
• FAQ: Q: Why not just follow Google’s example and provide deluxe WiFi express bus service for employees? A: The majority of employers cannot afford this level of employee benefits. Per-person, such bus service is surprisingly expensive. To provide such service for a large number of employees really adds up. Some companies that are not as profitable as Google run a few commute buses every day. It takes many, many 40-passenger buses to shift 23% of solo drivers to commute alternatives. In contrast, the $2 charge + $4 reward is very cost-effective and “pricing” is the only way to bring about a large change away from solo driving.     

Question 5: Cheating

• Modify the Page 4 pro/con section: Once per week, employees fill out a web-based form to record their commuting and to collect their rewards, spending one minute using the web form. With self-reporting by employees, there is risk that employees could "cheat" and collect more benefit that they deserve. <people objected that they wouldn’t remember accurately if they only reported once per month>
• FAQ: Q: Won’t workers intentionally mis-report their monthly parking for financial gain? How can you hope to stop this? A: Luckily, there are ways to detect cheating. Transportation firms can count people as they come onto company property in the morning, logging their commute method (they have to count people rapidly when carpools come in). The firms can accurately estimate actual company-wide commuting behavior, allowing comparison against self-reporting. The initial $0.25 charge + $1 reward is designed to ease in the self-reporting scheme with a very small monthly charge for solo drivers. This should reduce the potential for cheating. If cheating is a huge problem, then execs can raise the issue with the entire company. Remedies include implementing automated (non-gated) parking systems or canceling the program.
• FAQ: Q: Why not put an access gate on the parking lot entrance and have the employees use their id's to get in? A: This is typically too expensive because entryway paving and landscaping has to undergo major modifications. Past proposals have advocated access gates, but were cost-prohibitive. Inexpensive, high-tech, automated parking systems are a very interesting field with plenty of room for innovation.

Question 6: trouble / divisiveness

• An informative anecdote for company decision-makers to ponder: “FORGET ABOUT IT; this is idiotic. Exactly how much time do you want your management team to spend trying to resolve disputes about who is playing games with the transportation/parking policy?”
• Here is a long chat with a list serv climate skeptic about the policy: http://www.cities21.org/paidParkingClimSkept.htm. This can also help decision-makers ponder the internal divisiveness of the policy. “If my company made me listen to that sort of propaganda, I would look for another job. The personal car IS the right to be mobile. To oppose its use is to oppose our freedom.”
• FAQ: Q: Due to housing prices in this city, many employees end up living in areas that are affordable but do not have adequate transit service. This policy, therefore, would be unfair to these employees who may want to take advantage of sustainable transportation but simply can't. A: the largest commute mode shift will typically be to carpooling (not transit), simply because of the lack of transit service for many employees. The fact that good transit options do not exist does not cause this policy to fail. Further, this policy “internalizes” the negative economic externality caused by living far from work. Hence, this policy creates a more efficient housing market by motivating workers to make residential location decisions with less negative impact on others. Such a policy environment creates pressure for more housing to be built next to jobs. This policy “compounds” with positive feedback to increase climate protection and shorten commutes over time. The U.S. housing market is highly-regulated and poorly-regulated. This policy helps overcome the perverse incentives in the current housing market.
• FAQ: Q: This policy isn’t fair to workers with circumstance that make commute alternatives problematic. What about workers who are working long hours on hard projects, leaving for home at 10PM? What about families that have to drop kids at day care? A: Given that 75% of tech workers commute by driving alone, the policy works by enticing the “next likely group” of workers who are most likely to switch to commute alternatives (those with good transit/carpool options, amenable work schedules, desire for reduced commute stress, ability to nap on bus/carpool, etc.). This is an exceptionally effective “pricing policy” used to achieve critical societal objectives by attracting the next likely group. We make no apologies for cutting commute CO2 by 23% and not being completely fair to every single worker.  Society as a whole is much, much better off, but not everyone is a winner. While the two commuting scenarios given are difficult and are likely to be problematic, they are by no means impossible. There are people in those circumstances who commute via alternatives. For instance, many late working workers commute home at a normal hour and bring their work home – and they are happier for it. 
• Implementation: Companies whose employees are covered by bargaining unit contracts could be charged with unilaterally making a change in 'working conditions'. Hence, this policy would have to be negotiated with the bargaining unit, not imposed unilaterally. Nothing precludes custom implementations where circumstances demand it. 

Question 9 - general comments

• FAQ: Q: Why don’t you give everyone a $6 per day raise and then charge $6 per day for parking? A: Why tried this scheme initially, but the numbers don’t work out for employers, especially when you consider taxes. We agree that this scheme is more popular with employees than $2 charge + $4 reward.
• FAQ: Q: There should be a simple daily charge for parking, based on use of parking. There should be no free parking. There is no need for the complication of the reward system. A: It does not currently appear to be possible to implement standalone parking charges on a broad scale. Employees will object strongly. Employers will not adopt such charges. We agree that a standalone $6 per day parking charge would be simple and effective. A standalone $2 charge will change commuting behavior significantly, but not as much as needed. $2 charge + $4 reward will be more effective than a standalone $2 charge.   
• FAQ: Q: There should be a $4 reward with no charge. A: This is not a cost-effective way to change commuting behavior. The cost per commuter that changes behavior is about $26 per day, because the existing users of commute alternatives must be "grandfathered in." For calculations, see "Employer X Cashout Calculation" at the bottom of: http://www.cities21.org/paidParking.htm

At look at some correlations/data filters:

• Transport-Policy listserv members loathe this policy proposal. 

• Compared to males, females support this policy more, believe folks are less likely to cheat, and give more general comments cheering advocacy forward. 

• Transp-TDM listserv members have the highest percentage strongly (42% give a rating of 10) both for "quarter charge + dollar reward" and "$2 charge + $4 reward."

Parking Charges Policy Working Document

• http://www.cities21.org/paidParking.htm