Costs and benefits of parking charges in residential areas

• We develop a model for empirical evaluation of the social costs and benefits of street parking charges. From the model, we derive an expression for optimal parking charges and occupancy levels: in optimum, parking search costs are balanced against the loss of consumer surplus from unused parking spaces. Contrary to rules-of-thumb common in practice, optimal occupancy levels are not constant but depend on parking turnover rates and parking search costs. We demonstrate the model's applicability in a case study from Stockholm, where parking charges were recently introduced in suburban residential areas. The charges had considerable effects on parking de-mand, but our analysis shows that the overall welfare effect was a substantial welfare loss. Using parameters and demand functions estimated from the case study, we calculate optimal parking charges and occupancy levels, and show that the welfare loss arises because the introduced charges were considerably higher than the optimal ones.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Transportteknik och logistik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Transport Systems and Logistics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Parking charges

Parking regulation

Suburban streets

Cost -benefit analysis

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