The Return of Off-Street Parking

By Steve Poftak
July 10th, 2008

The Commonwealth has many important priorities (some apparently believe those priorities extend to subsidizing their golf rounds).

And the transportation bond bill passed by the Senate today (see the unamended version here) allegedly is a statement of those priorities.

Now, this space is strong proponent of smart infrastructure investment, so its particularly galling to see a resurgence of the Off-Street Parking program contained in the bill.

In this program, the Commonwealth pays for the construction of parking garages in various communities. But the problem is that parking garages are among the few public assets that have the potential to fund themselves (see our analysis of Salem’s proposal).

To put it more bluntly, if your downtown has a demand for parking, then people will pay for it. And if people will pay for it, then they can fund the garage and the state can move on to some other worthy project, or not spend the money at all.