The economics of regulatory parking policies: The (im)possibilities of parking policies in traffic regulation

This article contains an economic analysis of regulatory parking policies as a substitute to road pricing. The scope for such policies is discussed, after which a simple diagrammatic analysis is presented, focusing on the differences between the use of parking fees and physical restrictions on parking space supply. The former is found to be superior for three reasons: an information argument, a temporal efficiency argument and an intertemporal efficiency argument. Finally, a spatial parking model is developed, showing that it may be possible to overcome the difficulty of regulatory parking policies not differentiating according to distance driven by specifying the appropriate spatial pattern of parking fees, making individuals respond to (spatial) parking fee differentials.