IT ALL COMES down to a matter of physics. Even those of us whose knowledge of science is based on a foggy recollection of the Watch Mr. Wizard Show know that you can’t fit two solid objects into the same space at the same time. Unfortunately, the people in charge of planning enough parking capacity for downtown Dallas never watched Mr. Wizard. (What should they know about physics? They’re only architects and engineers.)
The city’s Office of Transportation Planning, in its infinite wisdom, has determined that in the case of parking spaces downtown, the laws of physics can be amended by city council action. The parking planners reason that since there is some turnover by people entering and leaving the downtown area during the course of a day, you can park 1.4 cars in each space each day. But as anyone who’s tried to find a parking space downtown between dawn and midnight knows, it’s that four-tenths of a car that will kill you. Like many of the theories which emanate from the bowels of city hall, the concept just doesn’t work. But you can’t blame the guys at city hall for trying. After all, when you don’t have parking spaces, you’ve got to at least have theories. And heaven knows we don’t have parking spaces.
Even if you buy the planners’ theory of surrealistic physics, we’ve still got massive parking problems downtown. The most optimistic inventory figure for the number of parking spaces downtown – from the Chamber of Commerce, naturally – is 78,071. If you accept the old car-and-four-tenths shell game for the capacity of a parking space, then we’ve got parking capacity for 109,299.4 cars. If you arrive at work any later than 7 a.m., you’ll find that you are car number 109,298.4. All you have to do is find the one available space out of the 100,000 plus that are already filled. Try Garland. If you go for anything closer to downtown, you’re taking a big gamble.
There’s one other little figure affecting the parking situation that I almost don’t have the heart to tell you. The most educated estimate of the number of cars which enter and leave the downtown area each weekday is 200,000. (That estimate also comes from the Chamber of Commerce; the last time the city performed an actual downtown traffic count was 1946.) If the chamber’s number is accurate, even we mathematics dropouts can compute the scope of our problem: We simply have 90,700.6 more cars than parking spaces. It may seem like an easy cop-out to blame a problem of those dimensions on city hall, but in this case, that’s squarely where the blame belongs. In 1969, the gentlemen of foresight who gather weekly in the council chambers ordained that downtown developers must provide one parking space for every 2000 square feet of new office space they create. That seems rather lenient on the developers when you consider that currently there are 16.9 workers for every 2000 square feet of downtown office space. That aggressive little ordinance only puts us in the hole by 12.7 parking spaces for every one that is built to comply with city standards.
It appears that the principle which governs that situation is not one of physics but one of economics – and ultimately a principle of politics. It costs a developer about $7000 per space to build the average downtown parking garage. That computes to a construction cost of $52.83 per square foot. From that parking space, you can earn about $5 per square foot per year in parking fees. It doesn’t take a genius to determine that it will take in excess of 10 years to pay for that parking space, and that doesn’t even allow for the cost of maintaining the space. Downtown office space can be constructed for $90 a square foot and fetches $16 to $18 a year in rental income. Using the same no-maintenance cost formula we just applied to parking spaces, it computes that office space would pay for itself in five years. There are a lot of variables, like the fact that in a parking garage, you can’t charge tenants for the massive drive space you must build so they can get into their spaces. The bottom line is that office space is easily twice as profitable to build as parking space.
If you were a developer, which would you rather build? A cynic might deduce that the developers, who have always had more than their share of clout at city hall, prevailed on those who make our city ordinances to let them off the hook and not level a pesky parking space requirement. After all, both the people who make the laws and the people who make the buildings have their own designated parking spaces for which they are not charged a penny. As is frequently the case in politics, a simple solution obviously presented itself: Let the have-nots take up the slack. The walk will do them good.
That’s what we are doing when we fork over $600 to $1000 a year for the privilege of parking near our work, or walk a mile or so to the nearest reasonably priced parking space. We are taking up the slack, filling in the gap in the political-economic system.
If this analysis of the situation sounds dismal, take some solace from the old “Cheer Up, It Could Be Worse” axiom. Next year it will be worse. Just to keep up with the oversaturated status quo, 16,000 new parking spaces would have to be constructed to stay in line with the new office spaces to be built this year. The Office of Transportation Planning reports that currently no parking facilities – public or private – are planned.
The parking prognosis is very simple: We are going to be paying more money for fewer parking spaces. The parking space that costs you $55 or $60 this month is going to cost you $80 to $90 by the end of 1981. There’s no way around it; it’s the classic economic reaction to the law of supply and demand. Five years from now, you could easily be paying the same rent for a 9 x 15 foot parking space that you would have paid for a one-bedroom apartment five years ago. And because of the planning time involved to take care of this problem, we are faced with that age-old dilemma of seeing a problem directly ahead of us and being unable to do anything to stop ourselves from running directly into the face of it. Perhaps it would be appropriate to send a message to the bureaucrats who got us in this fix: Take a walk.
Related Articles
Media
Will Evans Is Now Legit
The founder of Deep Vellum gets his flowers in the New York Times. But can I quibble?
Restaurant Reviews
You Need to Try the Sunday Brunch at Petra and the Beast
Expect savory buns, super-tender fried chicken, slabs of smoked pork, and light cocktails at the acclaimed restaurant’s new Sunday brunch service.
Arts & Entertainment
DIFF Preview: How the Death of Its Subject Caused a Dallas Documentary to Shift Gears
Michael Rowley’s Racing Mister Fahrenheit, about the late Dallas businessman Bobby Haas, will premiere during the eight-day Dallas International Film Festival.