Description:

Northwestern University Transportation Center presents:

Spillover Parking Congestion & Retail Business

ROBIN LINDSEY
University of British Columbia*

ABSTRACT:

Parking space near popular destinations is often scarce or expensive. Visitors may park in adjoining locales where they impede through-traffic, take parking space from other users, and create environmental externalities. We develop a model to study spillover parking generated by a major retailer (e.g., a mall) that provides limited on-site parking. Some customers park at the mall, some park on the street, and others who live or work nearby visit the mall on foot. The retailer chooses its parking-lot capacity, the parking fee, and the retail markup. We compare the effectiveness of four policies for dealing with spillover parking: on-street parking fees, on-street parking bans (i.e., residential parking permits), regulating mall parking fees, and regulating mall parking capacity (i.e., minimum/maximum parking requirements). Policy effectiveness depends on the severity of congestion, the amount of mall shopping by local and nonlocal shoppers, and how the mall responds.

SPEAKER BIO:

Robin Lindsey holds the CN Chair in Transportation and International Logistics at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. His research interests include traffic congestion, road pricing, parking policies, financing roads and other transportation infrastructure, urban public transportation and advanced traveler information systems. He has also worked on topics related to industrial organization including retail market competition, price discrimination, and predatory pricing.

Lindsey is a founding board member and past president of the International Transportation Economics Association (http://www.iteaweb.org), an Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part B and Transportmetrica, and a member of the editorial boards of Economics of Transportation, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, Journal of Urban Economics, and Transport Policy. He is coeditor with André de Palma and Stef Proost of Investment and the Use of Tax and Toll Revenues in the Transport Sector (Research in Transportation Economics, 2007), and coeditor with André de Palma, Emile Quinet and Roger Vickerman of Handbook in Transport Economics (Edward Elgar, 2011).

http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Faculty/People/Faculty_Members/Lindsey_Robin