Metered parking in Berkeley: "How the changes affect behavior."

We've experience metered paywalls recently, but what about the merits of parking meters?

It's hard to imagine a more controversial and counterintuitive topic -- no one wants to pay to park, right? But last week while in downtown Indianapolis, it was a breeze to find a streetside spot, swipe the credit card for dollar-an-hour parking, and go about our business on foot. We calculated how much time was needed for our objectives, and took up space only for these tasks.

If, as Jeff Speck proposes, parking revenues are put back into an infrastructure development pool for the benefit of the area around the meters, it sounds like a vast improvement on New Albany's frankly counterproductive method of suspending parking ordinances downtown, which has the effect of making parking value-less, while allowing indolent and unsupervised employees to park where shoppers should be parking, without penalty. Meanwhile, up the street and past an invisible line, the same ordinances are enforced. How does any of this make sense?

Maybe somewhere there's a secret plan.

Metered parking changes launch Tuesday in Berkeley, by Emilie Raguso (Berkeleyside)

... The goBerkeley model is based on the concept of “demand-responsive” pricing, so that prices reflect demand in several congested areas around town. The hope is to free up one or two spaces per block, by raising or adjusting the pricing in a way that will encourage some of the people currently filling spaces to move a bit farther away or use alternative modes of transportation. The city has been studying current parking demand, and plans to analyze how the changes affect behavior.