SSAT Practice Test 15

The Hidden Price of a Free Parking Space

¹Few things feel as fair as a free parking space on a city street. You find it, you take it, and nobody sends you a bill. But "free" parking is rarely free. It is simply paid for in a currency we do not notice: time.

²Consider a busy shopping street where every curb space costs nothing. The spaces fill by midmorning, and from then on each arriving driver must circle the block, waiting for someone to leave. Those circling cars add to traffic, burn fuel, and delay buses and delivery trucks that have nothing to do with parking at all. The space is free; the search is not.

³Economists describe this as a classic shortage. When a price is held below what people are willing to pay, demand outruns supply, and something other than money decides who gets the good. At a sold-out concert with cheap tickets, it might be whoever waits in line longest. On the street, it is whoever happens to be passing when a car pulls out.

⁴A better approach is to let the price of curb parking rise and fall with demand: higher on the busiest blocks at the busiest hours, lower or even zero where spaces sit empty. The goal is not to raise money but to keep one or two spaces open on every block, so that a driver who is willing to pay can park at once instead of circling. Several cities have experimented with such systems, adjusting meter rates periodically according to how full each block has been.

⁵Critics object that demand pricing punishes people who cannot afford to pay. The concern is serious, but the current system is hardly kind to them. It rewards the drivers with the most time to spare, not those with the greatest need, and the congestion it creates slows the buses that many lower-income residents depend on. If the revenue is spent on the street itself, on better sidewalks, lighting or bus service, the neighborhood that pays the price also collects the benefit.