Free Parking: Nun Such Thing
So what, exactly, do nuns drive?
Don't search for the punchline; it's an important question raised by Governing Magazine's Alan Ehrenhalt in his recent, useful recap of Donald Shoup's The High Cost of Free Parking:
How many parking spaces should a convent be legally required to provide? If you immediately answered "zero," then you probably have some common sense. Parking at a convent shouldn't be a zoning question.
Shoup condemns zoning laws that require businesses to provide free parking without much regard to type of business and neighborhood. Ehrenhalt notes in his article the appropriately large fuss Shoup makes about a pesky little document published decades ago by the Institute of Transportation Engineers called "Parking Generation," which zoning officials still frequently use to guide city policy. It recommends that businesses-from convents to taxi stands (!)-maintain enough free parking spaces that "virtually every driver will be able to find one virtually all the time."
A Sea of Troubles
Rather alarming signs of ecosystem stress on the Northwest's coasts, reported in today's Seattle Times. Temperatures are 2 to 5 degrees higher than normal, probably the result of the lack of "upwelling" that usually occurs in the spring and summer. (Those temperatures are normal readings for an El Nino year, but there's no El Nino this year.) In normal years, cold water from the ocean's depths rises to the surface carrying algae, krill, and other bottom-of-the-food-chain sustenance for small fish that in turn feed salmon and seabirds. This year: nothing.
The result is not pretty:
This spring, scientists reported a record number of dead seabirds washed up on beaches along the Pacific Coast, from central California to British Columbia... "This is somewhere between five and 10 times the highest number of bird deaths we've seen before," said Julia Parrish, an associate professor in the School of Aquatic Fisheries and Sciences at the University of Washington.
Some seabirds, like murres, are breeding very late or giving up. The dearth of food sources may also be partly responsible for the anemic salmon returns this year. But what's causing the problem?
Pay-As-You-Drive in Two Pages
Todd Litman of Victoria Transport Policy Institute has just posted a two-pager on pay-as-you-drive car insurance (PAYD) that does a nice job of briefly summarizing its benefits, such as making insurance more affordable for low-income residents and giving consumers more control over their driving expenses.
It also responds to some of the myths about PAYD, such as that suburban and rural residents would pay more if insurance was priced by the mile. (Not true: Because of how the pricing works, suburban and rural residents would only pay more if they drive more than average among suburban and rural motorists.)
Distance-based vehicle insurance has slowly been making progress in the Northwest; the most recent example is the Vancouver, BC City Council's resolution asking the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC) to offer optional PAYD. The resolution has sparked debate in BC about pros and cons of PAYD; Litman's summary should help clarify those.
P.S. - See a summary of recent PAYD developments here.
