Calculations and potential improvements to parking systems.
My apartment's parking situation is a free-for-all for the proletariat and a breeze for the bourgeoisie, with the two classes being separated by whether or not a "Reserved" is painted on the spot their car is parked. God forbid you come home at 1:00am and are forced to park in the deepest, darkest corners of the garage because you don't have a reserved spot and everyone is already deep in sleep for the night (read: cars parked in all of the spaces closest to the elevators). Otherwise, the standard "do I drive around in hopes to find a better parking spot, or just accept this one" question crosses every prole's mind upon entering the garage and driving down the rows—the optimal "parking" theory of transportation, which, unsurprisingly, has already been discussed.
This raises the question of whether it's worth it to upgrade one's social status from low- to high-class, not for the clout or jealous looks on the elevator, but the material benefit it provides in both alleviating mental turmoil and giving time back.
Many factors can be considered in the cost-benefit calculation, some mandatory and some optional:
The final formula comes out to:
mentalValue = mentalLoad * tripsPerDay * 365;
timeValue = timeSaved * tripsPerDay * spotAvailability * minuteRate * 365
cost = monthlyCost * 12
value = mentalValue + timeValue - cost
And here's a handy calculator Claude helped make to do all the math:
Here are some ideas on how to improve reserved parking systems with no guarantees on the downstream ramifications they may create. They also favor the wealthy over the less wealthy.
The Harberger Tax states that:
- Owners periodically self-assess their property and pay tax on its value.
- Others are able to purchase the property from the owner at the taxed price at any time, forcing a sale.
The Harberger Parking Tax states that:
Thus the owner is incentivized to price it fairly, if not a bit above his actual value, to ensure someone doesn't snatch it up.
Each parking space has a digital sign above it that displays the cost of parking there indefinitely (within reason), ranging from a minimum of $0 to a maximum of whatever the market decides. Nobody parking in the spot that's right next to the elevator? Drop the cost by 25% and see what happens.
This ensures that people who really want the primo parking spots get them.
Further, the cost could be normalized to some other number to ensure actual cost remains the same across socioeconomic statuses, i.e., a high net worth person can easily afford the parking cost because they are (likely) an outlier in the apartment's market, whereas a low net worth person may not be able to afford it. Instead, the cost could be a percent of their income with an extra scaling factor based on the income band they reside in. (To be clear, I think this paragraph's idea is too drastic and should not be implemented even if the parking market is.)
Participants who want reserved parking could purchase any number of raffle tickets at some amount. The first person chosen would get first pick of their spot, second person gets second pick, and so on. This provides some, but not complete, fairness around getting better spots.
However, this requires that no parking spots be assigned to anyone yet, meaning this only works in:
Parking spots aren't all equal, so why price them equally? The best reserved spots cost more than the not-so-good ones.