Seattle On Street Parking Fees
A Real Case Study on Elasticity
TWO DAY In-CLASS PROJECT
Due - End of class Friday
Directions
The city manager of Seattle is planning on an across-the-board, city wide, blanket policy of raising the parking fees for on-street parking in all 14 neighborhoods. Your task it to write a report as an economist advising the Seattle city manager how to MORE EFFICIENTLY implement this policy of adjusting parking fees for on-street parking within the major neighbohood blocks within downtown. In doing so, your research team has already conducted studies of 14 neighborhoods and collected data on the next slides. It is your job to do the following:
1. SYNTHESIZE and ANALYZE the data collected on the next slides. 2. Note and report on any patterns from the data, especially dealing with elasticity and demand rates for parking. 3. Suggest how to best implement parking fee rate adjustments based on the data and patterns 4. Write a DETAILED 1 -2 page typed report that not only suggests SPECIFIC recommendation of policy, but makes CLEAR REFERENCE to the data and elasticities given and JUSTIFIES it through sound, economic principles you learned. Write this on a Google Doc and upload to the post by Friday .
THE DATA STUDY DONE
This study looked at recent on-street parking pricing changes made by the city government in 14 neighborhoods in Seattle Between January and April 2011, the city of Seattle adopted a demand-based pricing strategy by changing on-street parking fees for a total of 10 neighborhoods surrounding the commercial core, based on their previous peak demand times. In total, four neighborhoods experienced an increase in parking fees; six neighborhoods had a decrease; and four had their fees unchanged. Those areas with higher demand had their fees increased and those areas with lower demand saw their fees reduced. Another four neighborhoods had their parking fees unchanged as parking demand in these neighborhoods were within the target range that the city had determined. The demand for parking was based on manually counted data that was gathered in a citywide parking study that was conducted a few months prior. The new demand and the parking price change of each neighborhood business district can be seen in Figure 2 - Table 1. In this study, the pricing elasticities of each block parking was calculated in neighborhoods with increased rates and decreased demand times.
FIGURE 1: New parking fee and rate of fee changes in each neighborhood within the study area in Seattle. Numbers before the ‘slash’ represents the new parking fee rate in $$, the number after the ‘slash’ represents the rate of change in the fee. (ex) 1.5 / -0.5 means the new parking fee is $1.50 and it was lowered $0.50
FIGURE 2 - Table 1 Price elasticities by neighborhood blocks in Seattle.
The MEAN is the average change in elasticity (either up or down) experienced with the new fees implemented