EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Cruising for parking

Donald C. Shoup

Transport Policy, 2006, vol. 13, issue 6, 479-486

Abstract: Suppose curb parking is free but all the spaces are occupied, and off-street parking is expensive but immediately available. In this case, you can cruise to find a curb space being vacated by a departing motorist, or pay for off-street parking right away. This paper presents a model of how drivers choose whether to cruise or to pay, and it predicts several results: you are more likely to cruise if curb parking is cheap, off-street parking is expensive, fuel is cheap, you want to park for a long time, you are alone in the car, and you place a low value on saving time. The model also predicts that charging the market price for curb parking--at least equal to the price of adjacent off-street parking--will eliminate cruising. Because the government sets curb parking prices, planners and elected officials strongly influence drivers' decisions to cruise. The failure to charge market rates for curb parking congests traffic, pollutes the air, wastes fuel, and causes accidents. Between 1927 and 2001, studies of cruising in congested downtowns have found that it took between 3.5 and 14Â min to find a curb space, and that between 8 and 74 percent of the traffic was cruising for parking.

Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (142)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967-070X(06)00044-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:trapol:v:13:y:2006:i:6:p:479-486

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Transport Policy is currently edited by Y. Hayashi

More articles in Transport Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:trapol:v:13:y:2006:i:6:p:479-486