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News
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Talking Transportation: Solving the Railroad Parking Mess
By Jim Cameron
Special to WestportNow
Before we can get cars off the roads by persuading drivers to become passengers on the trains, we first have to give them a place to park their cars at the train stations. As all commuters know, station parking is a nightmare.
Many stations have a four- or five-year wait for annual permits, which can cost up to $600, and day-parking is expensive, if you can find it.
As I’ve explained before, parking at most rail stations is owned by the Connecticut Department of Transportation but administered by the local towns. That’s why we’ve ended up with a crazy quilt of rules and pricing.
Take Rowayton for example. Every year annual permits are handed out on a first-come, first served basis one hectic Saturday morning in May. Nobody is “grandfathered-in.” Everyone literally waits in line, often all night, every year.
This may seem fair, especially to newcomers, but it’s hardly an efficient way to manage a scarce resource.
I have a better idea—an auction. Spaces would start selling online on a certain date and time with the first permit going to the highest bidder in a 24-hour period. The second permit would go to the next highest bidder, etc.
There’d be no preference to those who already have permits nor by town of residency. The scarce supply of spaces would moderate the demand by price.
As it is, most towns oversell their available spaces. In Westport they sell twice as many permits as there are spaces. Why? Because the permits are too cheap and there’s never a time when everybody who has one tries to park on the same day.
People hoard their annual permits, renewing them even if they don’t use them regularly.
True confession: I have an annual parking permit in Darien that costs me $288. Having waited four years to get it, I’m not likely to give it up, even though I use it only one or two days a week.
Is that fair to the daily commuter who needs that space but hasn’t risen to the top of the waiting list because guys like me won’t let go? Probably not. But unless my town raises parking permit prices and squeezes my greed out of the equation, I’ll keep hanging onto my permit. An auction would change that.
My space would go to the highest bidder, not the weasel like me who thinks he “paid his dues” by waiting on some list for a few years and deserves tenure.
I’m all for keeping parking “affordable.”
The problem is, it’s too affordable. We should let the marketplace define the price of affordability, and that’s what an auction would do most efficiently.
Of course, the other solution is to add more parking spaces. When CDOT tried adding a few spaces in Rowayton a few years back, they were pilloried.
When they came to Darien and proposed more parking at Noroton Heights, they were booed out of town.
I guess the NIMBYs won because they’ve never had to wait in line all night for a parking permit.
_____
(Editor’s Note: Jim Cameron has been a Darien resident for 14 years. He is vice chairman of the Connecticut Metro-North Shore Line East Rail Commuter Council and a member of the Coastal Corridor Transportation Investment Area, one of five Transportation Investment Areas established by the Connecticut General Assembly in July 2001 to develop 20-year strategic plans for each of the state’s major transportation corridors. He is also a member of the Darien Representative Town Meeting. The opinions and accuracy of information in this article are the responsibility of the contributor. E-mail him at or http://www.trainweb.org/ct)
Comments: Comment Policy
I think it’s a shame for Westport residents to have to wait up to five years for permits. At the same time the Westport Transit “jitney buses” remain grossly underutilized. We should explore all avenues to come up with a better system to lower the wait time for residents and at the same time provide incentives that would increase the usage of the jitney while we solve the problem. The Westport transit directors have done a great job trying to do this, but more efforts are needed by the town administration. Including all subsidies (federal, state and town), the jitney “costs” between $10-15 per rider while the rider pays a fraction of the cost. At the same time our parking fees should not be lower than any of the towns around us, because out of towners naturally go to the lowest cost alternative for them.
Any solution has drawbacks whether it is increasing parking fees, increasing parking spaces or repositioning the transit buses closer to the station. While we all gripe about the local nad highway congestion, the old rail cars. It is time to focus on what we can do locally.
Charlie Haberstroh
Board of Finance
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