[jaynos]

Street parking is difficult to find because it cost less to park on the street, so people cruise around for spots instead of heading to a parking deck.

I just heard a Marketplace segment on this [1] where they talk about on-demand adjustable pricing. Very interesting.

[1] http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/tricky-practice-pr...

[malyk]

The Parking Is Hell Freakonomics episode is pretty good. In it they estimate that there are something like 800 million parking spaces in the country and recounted a study by Donald Shoup that estimates that up to 30% of traffic in cities are people cruising looking for street parking.

Basically, we don't have a real market for parking in most cities, so people will keep their car parked on the street forever instead of using market forces to induce turnover which is better for the city(revenue) and the nearby businesses(more customers).

[1] - http://freakonomics.com/2013/03/13/parking-is-hell-a-new-fre... [2] - http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf