I'd like to see how Santa Monica compares. 90k pop., and more dense than Berkeley. No public rail (yet), a big commitment to parking lots, and tons of cars and commuters. But I think stands up to Berkeley as far as urban fabric. But maybe my perception of the amount of parking is off.
There are some pages on this topic. It seems that Santa Monica switched to a new scheme which detects if a car has left and resets the meter, rather than leaving some time for the next person. ("Greedy meters" say a few sources.)
> But Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of “The High Cost of Free Parking,” sees Santa Monica’s plan as a pale imitation of the more ambitious plans in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
> “I don’t see how this increases turnover — it just makes sure they get everyone to pay and they know how much they are getting,” said Professor Shoup, who is widely considered the intelligent-parking guru. “Anytime someone says something isn’t about money, it’s about money.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/us/santa-monica-resets-par...
(It looks like LA is using variable rate meters, which he says is better at improving turnover and of getting to the real market rate.)
> As an example in Santa Monica, which is starting to move in Shoup direction, but not quite there, we have some garages in Downtown that are in the red almost all the time during the week, and many blocks where on street parking is impossible, while hundreds of spaces are routinely unused at the Main Library underground lot and Civic Center garage at the same time. I know this because Santa Monica actually has a city website with live tracking of parking spots remaining at each of it's city lots.
> If there were stronger price incentives (meaning make high demand lots and street spots more expensive while making under utilized lots and spaces dirt cheap) and advertising of the availability of the under utilized spaces, instead of the same garages filling up to the max and people freaking out that we need more and more parking, maybe we'd realize we actually have plenty. Then instead of wasting yet more land use and city money for more parking capacity, we could start making more open space for people, such as more park space and plazas.
That was before the new meter system. Apparently, there's now an app for finding parking.
That's all I could find before I grew disinterested.
I live in Santa Monica, I've walked ~8k each day for the last 3 days around the city, don't own a car.
I don't own a car, so I haven't paid _too_ much attention to parking, but it seems like there isn't a whole lot of space down near the promenade, or basically anywhere in the whole touristy part of town.
I walked in some residential neighborhoods tonight, and lots of people had garages and driveways, so even one (admittedly long) block off of a thoroughfare, there was a large amount of on-street parking.
