Outside of my house on 15th Street, residential
parking on weekends is a nightmare. At
the beginning of the past two school years, I purchased a parking permit for my
block. The permit enables the exclusion
of parking to non-residents, while permitting limited rivalry between residents
to find an ideal parking spot on the block.
The city of Charlottesville maintains ‘permit only’ parking Monday
through Friday by ticketing individuals without permits, thereby discouraging non-residents
from acting as rivals to those who purchased permits and in theory, reminding
them of their exclusion from using the spaces. However, if you were to run an errand on Friday
evening and return around 6PM, you might as well have left your vehicle over by
Barracks—there is no hope of parking on your block.
During the weekend, parking becomes non-excludable and
incredibly rivalrous, as many more car owners try to squeeze into the temporarily
free-of-charge parking spots. Other
individuals’ choice to park where I usually keep my car either leaves me
feeling the need to invest in one of these in order to easily
squeeze my behemoth of a sedan into a parking space (granted of course, that
there is one feasibly large enough) or simply refusing to drive anywhere. With limited and tremendously rivalrous street
parking, these new space occupants must
have their cars somewhere else during the week.
Often these cars belong to apartment residents who do not want to pay
for spaces in their parking garages, so they scrounge for parking in a
characteristically Pareto inefficient move – while these guests to 15th
Street may be better off by parking on my block over the weekend, my
neighbors and I who have nowhere else to park, are certainly not.
2 comments:
As your housemate who also parks their car on 15th Street, I understand your struggle, Alex. I am frequently burdened with the decision of whether to keep my car parked for the entire weekend to ensure that some random car does not take my well-earned spot, or to drive to the store. In order to reconcile your frustrations with weekend parking on 15th Street, perhaps you ought to take the advice of Charles Tiebout, and move to a place that aligns more with your preferences (i.e. an apartment with 24/7 designated parking). According to Tiebout, “the consumer-voter moves to the community that satisfies his preference pattern.” By moving where you live to a place with consistently available parking, you are revealing your demand for assured weekend parking on 15th Street to the city of Charlottesville.
While I would hate to not live with you, Alex, your moving out would open up more parking space for my car, making the parking situation on 15th Street just a little less rivalrous for me!
A video all residents of 15th street should see: https://youtu.be/bGvnK_jACxw?t=15s
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