BID RENT CURVES APPLY TO PARKING SPACES.

Strong Towns contributor Daniel Herriges notes a failure of Minnesota city governments to price that asset properly.  The sub-heading of the post would be worthy of a Friday short take but for the substance that follows: "How much is the curb space in front of your house worth? How much does your city act like it's worth?"  I could really confound the issue and tell Minnesotans about "dibs" in the Chicago style, couldn't I?  That would be contrary to Minnesota Nice.

There are plenty of good ways to get to the fair, and driving is far from the best of them. Biking is easy on a new dedicated path, buses that run every few minutes will drop you off literally at the front gate, and there are hundreds of park-and-ride shuttles from around the metro area as well. Nonetheless, the fair is such an enormous event, and it draws so many people from far outside the Twin Cities who aren't habitual transit users, that inevitably drivers pour into the residential neighborhood.

Dozens of the neighbors respond by becoming temporary entrepreneurs. Many homeowners—including nearly everyone on a few blocks closest to the main gate of the fairgrounds—turn their lawns into impromptu parking lots. This can net the owner of a normal-sized yard a couple thousand dollars over the 12-day run.

"Parkers," as they call themselves, chit-chat with each other from opposite sides of the street, compare notes, and certainly scope out each other's pricing, in the same way that gas stations are always eyeing each other's price so as neither to be undercut nor leave potential profit on the table. The vibe is more cooperative than competitive, though. Neighbors will trade shifts with each other so as not to be tethered to a lawn chair all day. Someone who doesn't have room for a larger truck or SUV might shout down the street to a friend who does. One block with a prime location plays "baseball," as a friendly neighbor explained to me: a "batting lineup" of participants get to take turns ushering cars into parking stalls, and they share the proceeds.

There's a similar phenomenon at the Wisconsin State Fair, which is similarly in an urban setting, and there are Green Bay mortgages lifted early from the sale of parking spaces on lawns near Lambeau Field.  In all such places, a rent gradient emerges.

All this would just be an entertaining object lesson in capitalism and free enterprise, but the parking aspect is also a lesson in the incoherence of parking policy. A quick survey of handmade signs reveals the going market rate for a parking space in my neighborhood during the fair, and the answer is between $15 and $40, depending on how close to the gate you are and whether you get to keep your keys or leave them with a stranger.

The incoherence is in the street parking. "The city does not charge for on-street parking on any of the streets adjoining the fairgrounds, and as a result it fills up almost immediately. You get a space in one of two ways: show up very early in the morning, or win the lottery, essentially, and arrive as another fairgoer is pulling out."  You'd think St. Paul might prohibit all nearby on-street parking on fair days the way West Allis does or on game day the way Green Bay does.  (It is possible to find vacant on-street parking during State Fair season or on game day, if you don't mind walking.)  You'd be wrong.

On some of the neighborhood streets, however, the city does ration parking, just not by price. Permit parking was instituted a decade or so ago by request of a noisy contingent of neighbors; it applies from May through September, and was implemented less because of the State Fair than the several months of heavy weekend traffic to nearby Como Park, which sports a zoo and other attractions. These residents complained that they frequently couldn't park directly in front of their own houses (although every house in the area has off-street parking, either via driveway or alley), and the city obliged and established a permit zone.

What happens in the permit zones during the State Fair, when parking demand is overwhelming? The answer is that they fill up anyway by mid-day. Some people don't notice they're in a permit area, but many do. (I know because they ask my dad if the permit requirement is enforced, and he tells them it is.) Given the expense of the alternatives and the value of their time, the risk of a $40 fine is just another price tag.

The lesson is simple. "Parking space has both a price and a value whether or not city policy acknowledges it." Ultimately, the parking spaces are productive assets, and their owners ought to price them accordingly. "The next step just might be to apply some Shoupian wisdom, and make an honest assessment of what the curb space the city owns is actually worth—not just in my neighborhood but in all of them. Every city owes it to its residents and other taxpayers to be a good steward of its public street space by taking stock of this, rather than just defaulting to giving away free parking to those who've won a proverbial lottery."