The Price Doesn’t Matter if You Don’t Have to Pay: Legal Exemption as an Obstacle to Congestion Pricing in Transportation

摘要

Transportation analysts frequently recommend pricing as way to combat roadcongestion. Market prices for curb parking are a particularly attractive way to implement thisapproach, both because paying to park is a less alien idea than paying to drive, and because thetravel involved in cruising for parking is almost entirely socially wasteful. However, theliterature on performance-priced parking has thus far ignored the possibility that pervasivenonpayment—through rent-seeking, opportunism or fraud—will dilute the efficacy of marketprices. In this paper we use an original survey of thousands of parking meters in Los Angeles toshow that at any given time a substantial portion (usually over 30 percent) of vehicles parked atoperating meters are both not paying and not breaking any laws. We document, in other words, ahigh incidence of legal nonpayment. We also show that across an entire day, vehicles that arelegally nonpaying consume more meter hours than vehicles that pay or that occupy spacesillegally. The implications of this research are twofold. First, legal nonpayment costs localgovernments significant amounts of revenue each year. Second, and more importantly, the highrate of legal nonpayment threatens to undermine the effectiveness of policies built aroundmarket-prices for curb parking. We provide suggested policy reforms for cities confronted withhigh levels of legal nonpayment. Chief among these reforms is an end to the practice of grantingfree, time-unlimited parking to vehicles displaying disabled placards.