Lyft’s Radical Experiment in Charging for Free Parking

This is quite bizarre to me. In city centers, very few if any office buildings in any industry offer free parking. My company in Seattle will subsidize our ~280&#x2F;mo parking by 100. I have never heard of a building in downtown Seattle charging under 200 a month for parking, even outdoor surface lots are around 200 monthly. Is it not a bit obvious that free parking dramatically encourages driving over public transit? Parking demand must grow as a company grows, while its parking structure generally is fixed. Increasing the cost is the only way to effectively manage the situation.<p>The alternative from my company versus the parking subsidy is a free unlimited public transit card. Most people choose to take either light rail or bus, and choose their living situations so as to take advantage of those options.

What if experiment is conducted like this:<p>1. 53 top bidders pay and get their spot.<p>2. total money collected is shared between everyone who doesn&#x27;t park

My wife&#x27;s company just pays people bonuses to take the bus&#x2F;ride a bike&#x2F;walk&#x2F;run&#x2F;whathaveyou to work. Employees get a small bonus literally every day they utilize alternative transportation. It&#x27;s not much for each commute, but over the course of a month, it ends up being a few hundred bucks for some people. My wife used to drive to work, but is now riding her bike. I am 99% sure she loves the bike commute so much now that she wouldn&#x27;t revert back even if the small bonus got taken away.

Just an observation: Why aren&#x27;t Lyft&#x27;s employees using Lyft&#x27;s ride-sharing service to get to work?<p>I know that&#x27;s not the point of the article, but if your company owns ~25% of the market share [1], wouldn&#x27;t it make more sense to instead give your employees &quot;Lyft credits&quot; (or whatever it&#x27;s called), and have them use the service on a near-daily basis.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tech&#x2F;news&#x2F;2017&#x2F;06&#x2F;13&#x2F;uber-market-share-customer-image-hit-string-scandals&#x2F;102795024&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.usatoday.com&#x2F;story&#x2F;tech&#x2F;news&#x2F;2017&#x2F;06&#x2F;13&#x2F;uber-mar...</a>

Relevant to a lot of people here -<p>California&#x27;s Parking Cashout law requires your employer to reimburse you what they would spend on your parking if you don&#x27;t use it. This applies in the (somewhat narrow) situation where you not parking has a direct impact on what the company spends - i.e. they rent a spot in a garage.<p>When I worked in Santa Monica it was a couple hundred bucks a month - cycling was nicer anyway, too.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arb.ca.gov&#x2F;planning&#x2F;tsaq&#x2F;cashout&#x2F;cashout.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arb.ca.gov&#x2F;planning&#x2F;tsaq&#x2F;cashout&#x2F;cashout.htm</a>

The story telling and gifs are really outstanding. Congrats to Bloomberg. What&#x27;s not so nice is ... it&#x27;s completely not accessible. If you achieve that - hats off

This is not a very radical idea. It is known that people are averse to losing things they already have (even in exchange for equal or greater benefit). I&#x27;m glad it worked out for Lyft without too many ruffled feathers, at least according to the comic. I&#x27;m glad this sort of idea continues to get media exposure. It needs it.<p>An example, it is absurd to me (and most urbanist types) that Manhattan still has free street parking and that all the East River bridges are free. Congestion pricing in Lower Manhattan was on the table during the Bloomberg era, but never made it through. It should have.

The facebook character had the right answer. These companies have products that create more value than running a paid parking lot... why would you trade an employee on a product like that for a few dollars in parking fees.

Why not just treat the assigned parking a standard perk (considered in the overhead cost of an employee) and offer a cash bonus to those who elect to not have a spot? That would maintain the perception of the parking being free, while allowing for a reduction in usage based on the same value assessment described in the article.

I think a big issue with parking is that people might not even consider that there are alternatives to driving. The car is just a little too comfy. But if everyone is so far from work that they need to drive to get there, that creates so many congestion and environmental issues. This seems like a real weak spot for our culture.

Am I crazy or is it ridiculous that a ride-sharing company didn&#x27;t give their employees free Lyft credits to alleviate the situation? You would think that would be one of the perks of working for Lyft. I am also confused as to why it was called free parking. Is employee parking not considered as part of compensation? I&#x27;ve worked at offices before that used public lots and the employer purchased parking passes for everyone.<p>Also, a bit off topic, but biking is not a panacea for everyone. I tried cycling my 18 mile commute along the PCH for 1.5 years. By the end of it, I was really turned off by biking. I like to play basketball, hike, and go open ocean swimming. I finally quit cycling to work because I had dead legs due to musclr fatigue and couldn&#x27;t enjoynmy preferred recreational activities.<p>Also, I sweat very easily. Luckily my office at the time had a shower.

It &quot;worked&quot; because people paid or found an alternative? Who&#x27;s going to quit their job over parking?<p>Seems like the standard formula for a business news article now is to repackage common sense ideas as something new and exciting.<p>Charged for parking? Let&#x27;s make a comic about how innovative that was.

Gave me an idea of dynamic pricing for public parking, like the surge prices of ride sharing services. Maybe this already exists somewhere?<p>If there are only a handful spots left, the price would be really high. If a parking lot is not that popular it will automatically be cheaper. Environmentally friendly cars could get a discount.<p>Instead of reserved parking spots, the spot would know for instance if it&#x27;s never used during working hours and the prices would adjust to optimize the fill rate of all spots. Residents would get a discount for spots close to home.<p>I guess most cities have zones with different fees, and often free parking on weekends and nights. This would instead adjust it automatically, maybe even adjust for popularity of a particular group of spots.

Tolls continue to represent an effective way of managing congestion in large cities but it&#x27;s only if the community will be willing to accept it. Better transportation alternatives need to be provided in addition to the introduction of tolls to appease everyone.

Doesn&#x27;t the university down the peninsula charge everyone monthly&#x2F;yearly parking fees to reduce driving and encourage people to take public transit&#x2F;bike or live on campus?<p>Most FinDi commuters have to pay for their spots. It&#x27;s widely used and well known stick to get people to carpool or take alternative means to work.

With so many companies offering employees public transportation passes for commuting, I&#x27;d love to see Lyft&#x2F;Uber create the ability for employers to offer free&#x2F;reduced fare office commutes (within a determined range). AFAIK the only option they have is to give blanket monthly credits.

In the City of Melbourne in Australia, most parking that you could use all day is not free. You can either get in by 10am and pay $20 per day, or pay around $100 per day if you arrive after that. There&#x27;s still heaps of cars in the city.

You need about $250 minimum in credits to make a $12&#x2F;day commute viable via lyft line. If they gave everyone $250&#x2F;month in credits, I bet the parking issue would of reduced itself significantly.

Obviously parking is not free. You can just look at the paid lots all around. Or look at the assessment of the headquarters purchase.<p>You might as well &quot;investigate&quot; whether free work shuttles are actually free.

Had an idea while reading the story: if I worked for Lyft during that time, I would have created an app that made it simple to rent out your &quot;owned&quot; spot to fellow employees. It would be easier and faster than the Facebook group, with built-in payment.<p>The cost for the app? Parking space owners have to let me use their space for one workday a year, with a prearranged date of my choice. If everybody signed up, I would have a space almost every day, free of charge.

This program isn&#x27;t free for Lyft -- @ 1,000 employees and $375&#x2F;space&#x2F;month for each of the 53 spaces, the monthly program cost is $35K per month (with the subsidies net of revenue), or 420K a year in cash burn!!!!<p>IMHO, they&#x27;d be better off shutting down the lot and using it as a picnic area &#x2F; common area for everyone to enjoy.

some cities experiment with dynamic parking pricing <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfpark.org&#x2F;how-it-works&#x2F;pricing&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sfpark.org&#x2F;how-it-works&#x2F;pricing&#x2F;</a>

Love the animated comic format of this post. Well done, Bloomberg

I work at &quot;the university down the peninsula&quot; (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14975881" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14975881</a>). Stanford—in my opinion—has a similar situation.<p>We are affected by the &quot;General Use Permit&quot; (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gup.stanford.edu&#x2F;the-project&#x2F;reference-documents" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gup.stanford.edu&#x2F;the-project&#x2F;reference-documents</a>) which, among other things, limits the number of parking spaces that campus can have.<p>As a result, Stanford has a number of programs to encourage people to commute:<p>• Paying for a Caltrain Go Pass (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;transit&#x2F;free-transit-incentives&#x2F;caltrain-go-pass" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;transit&#x2F;free-transit-inc...</a>) and VTA Eco Pass (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;transit&#x2F;free-transit-and-incentives&#x2F;vta-eco-pass" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;transit&#x2F;free-transit-and...</a>).<p>• Running the AE-F (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;marguerite&#x2F;aef" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;marguerite&#x2F;aef</a>) and EB (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;marguerite&#x2F;eb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;marguerite&#x2F;eb</a>) lines to the East Bay.<p>• Coordinating AC Transit for the two Dumbarton Express lines (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dumbartonexpress.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dumbartonexpress.com</a>), and the U line (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;transit&#x2F;free-transit-incentives&#x2F;line-u" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;transit&#x2F;free-transit-inc...</a>) lines.<p>• Various car- and van-pooling options (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;rideshare" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;rideshare</a>).<p>And there&#x27;s also the various Marguerite lines (X Express &amp; Limited, Y Express and Limited, and S) that supplement normal service. There&#x27;re also other things that I&#x27;ve forgotten about.<p>All of those options are pretty well used, and it shows that for the main use cases, it is possible to &quot;charge for free parking&quot;, but I think the important thing is that you do have to have some external constraint.<p>In Lyft&#x27;s case, it was a lack of spaces. In Stanford&#x27;s case, it&#x27;s a negotiated restriction. Either way, that avoids the &quot;Facebook alternative&quot;, where you don&#x27;t have any outside reason you can point to.<p>The best example of this is the Stanford Research Park: If you&#x27;re a Stanford employee who works off-campus (and the Stanford Research Park counts as off-campus), then you don&#x27;t qualify for the $300 yearly credit, even if you use bus&#x2F;train&#x2F;vanpool all the time (see <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;commute-club&#x2F;about-commute-club&#x2F;are-you-eligible" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transportation.stanford.edu&#x2F;commute-club&#x2F;about-commu...</a>).<p>So I guess the lesson (or at least the correlation) is, you need some external restriction, or else &quot;most&quot; people will drive!

You can&#x27;t pay for that type of advertising.

Demand is a fallacy because they compel you to come into the building.<p>If they allowed everyone to choose to work from home, or from another location, then it would have something interesting to say about it.<p>But the demand is artificial in that context, forcing people to exist at that office, and yet not allowing them the means to do so with their mode of travel of choice by not providing sufficient parking.

Asking me to pay for parking is the same as saying &quot;please don&#x27;t come here unless you absolutely have to&quot;.<p>And that&#x27;s exactly what I do - I almost never go anywhere that makes you pay for parking. Downtown, or to visit congested cities for example. Or to small stores on roads with parking meters.<p>Are those places happier without me? Maybe. Depends on if they value whatever economic activity I would produce over their poor traffic management.<p>Would I use public transportation? After trying it for a while in a city that is widely considered among the top 5 in the world for public transport my answer is a resounding: NO!<p>Public transport is horrible, even when it is the best humans are able to make it. I feel bad for those people who have no other choice, and I am determined to never live in a city that requires it.