WMATA's parking giveaway

I think Washington's Metro is missing out on a big revenue opportunity because it undercharges for parking.

According to Metro's own Web site, suburban parking lots and garages "often" become full by 8:00am. Out of dozens of parking facilities, the site lists only five that generally have parking available all day. I used to live next to a suburban station with parking (Glenmont) and the lot would routinely fill before 8:00am. Those who arrived later would drive around the garage in a fruitless search for a space. Many of the small lots at close in stations, such as Rhode Island Avenue - Brentwood, fill even earlier.

Parkers who don't want to get up so early have another option: reserved parking. These spaces remain available until 10:00am on weekdays. Reserved parking carries a $45 monthly premium. The last time I checked there was no waiting list for reserved parking at lots that fill late, such as Greenbelt. Wait lists at many stations that fill earlier, such as Glenmont, were running over a year long. Only a small number of spaces (certainly less than twenty percent) at each station are reserved.

The parking lots fill early, and reserved parking is in demand, so clearly parking at Metro stations is a scarce commodity. Metro has chosen to allocate these scarce spaces to the people who are willing to get out of bed the earliest.

I have a better idea: let's allocate all the parking spaces to those who are willing and able to pay the most for them. Parking at Glenmont, for instance, is $4.00 per day. This is a bargain. I think parking rates should be hiked to the maximum level that motorists will pay, while still filling up the parking lots. At worst, the impact on Metrorail ridership would be zero: the lots would still be filling up, just later in the morning. At best, ridership would increase, because riders might start to carpool more in order to split the cost of parking.

I acknowledge that those with less money would be the clear losers in a scheme like this. But the additional parking revenue could be used to build more parking. It could also be used to improve bus service so that more people could get to Metro without having to drive. Better bus service would benefit everyone, including those with less money, because they would no longer have to get to the Metro lot well before 8:00am.

At a minimum, reserved parking rates should be hiked dramatically. Year-long waiting lists make no sense. The space should be allocated to she who can pay the most, not to she who can wait a year.

Metro has already shown its willingness to hike parking fees at stations near FedEx Field during game days, so that football fans don't fill the lots up. Parking at two stations on game days will be $25 for non-Metro riders.

Metro should take its FedEx Field logic to the next step. It is time to charge market-rate parking at all lots. This would probably call for large hikes at some lots, while necessitating small cuts at those lots that currently don't fill up. Maybe Metro thinks the early bird should get the worm. More likely, Metro and its board simply have not thought about this issue, or they don't want to face political backlash from hiked parking fees. But I'm all for parking fees that will fill the lots, fill the trains, and fill the coffers too.