Of Sheep, Parking and Saona Island

Somehow one can always tell a no-parking sign, regardless of the language it’s in.  The photo is from the Dominican Republic, where the family and I vacationed last week.  (We stayed at the Santana Beach Resort and Casino, a place I’d certainly recommend for a relaxing all-inclusive family vacation.  Ignore the allegations of malaria epidemics and the Norwalk virus; these are exaggerated).

Anyway, here’s the story for you…

We were on a day trip to the nearby Island of Saona.  Saona is the type of place you see in Caribbean travel brochure photos with palm trees, powdery white sand and crystal clear turquoise water.

The island fulfilled its promise that day: plenty of sunshine, drinking rum from a coconut, and soft Meringue music playing in the background.

Wait a minute.  Does any of this have to do with parking?  It does…

I think it would have been a perfect day, except for one thing:  the beach is long but skinny, and it was utterly packed with sun-seeking tourists just like me.  The family and I had a hard time trying to find a spot to put our towels and also seek out a site for sand castles.

Later I got to wondering why there were so many tourists on the beach.  It’s not easy to get there: you basically have to take or charter a boat.  We took the quite entertaining speedboat-there-catamaran-back excursion at $75 per head, but even with the myriad less-expensive ways to get there you’d think that the beach would be sparsely populated.

I can’t help but feel that the experience would have been better if there was some sort of way to regulate the number of people on the beach.  Overcrowding was definitely not my expectation and I’m now certain I would not revisit the place - despite its beauty – knowing that I’d be fighting for towel real-estate.

So here is my (admittedly pathetic) perception:  I couldn’t help but think that the beach at Saona is really just a parking lot for towels.

Anyway, I asked around and it turns out that the beach is part of a government owned natural reserve.  It’s public property.  The tour operators shuttle as many sun burnt tourists back and forth as they can in order to earn a living.  But because there’s no feeling of ownership over Saona it’s being overused by tourists and the tour agencies that arrange transport to the island.

What we’re talking about here is an example of the tragedy of the commons.  (Garrett Hardin’s popular essay The Tragedy of the Commons argues that a public pasture must eventually become overgrazed because the shepherds with the most sheep benefit more than those with less sheep, however the costs of grazing are shared by all users).

Such is the reason that whales need protection from over-fishing, why the Earth might just need the Kyoto Accord after all, and why Saona Isla could use a gatekeeper.

It’s also why a parking lot needs management.

Pretend you’re a campus parking manager, and like most parking managers you’ve got significantly more parkers than spaces.  Imagine further that you suspend all parking enforcement activities for two weeks.  In no time the place would be overrun by parkers, placing their vehicles just about anywhere they fit.  It’s the towels on the beach of Saona all over again.

Don’t believe me?

Such a situation occurred a few years back the University of British Columbia.  The parking enforcement officers were part of a Union that that happened to go on strike for 17 days.  Not surprisingly word traveled like wildfire saying that there was no parking enforcement anywhere on campus.  Immediately the formerly rule-abiding parkers filled every space, parked over the lines, double and triple parked, parked at the end of every aisle, on the hash-marks, and so on.  In addition they spilled over into non-parking areas:  vehicles were also parked on every street, on the grass, and even in the fire routes.

Over this period of parking free-for-all the results were not pretty:  numerous safety issues arose, traffic was snarled, tempers flared.  Surprisingly no accidents were reported.  But overall, and perhaps most significantly there was a general epiphany that parking management isn’t such a bad idea after all.

So anyway, that's why parking lot management is actually needed: it protects parkers from themselves.  Not much technology in today’s article but I promise more geek speek in the next posting.

Comments

[Shirl]

We also give the students 1 week to pick up their permits and do not ticket them if they are parked in their leased space but just have not picked up their permit. This is not public knowledge, though and we still ticket and tow "squatters".

[Eben]

At one point our office experimented with improving "customer service" by suspending "No Permit" ticketing for the first week of classes. The idea was to allow students, who sometimes can't make it in before the start of the term, to pick up their permit without worrying about a ticket. This worked pretty well for Fall term, it was unexpected and we definitely had fewer petitions and complaints. As soon as Winter term came around our mistake became obvious. Word had gotten around quickly and everyone decided that they would drive to campus and take advantage of "free parking week". The end result was that the very people who we intended to serve, those customers purchasing permits, were greatly inconvenienced. Our lots were completely full early each day and many permit holders resorted to parking illegally simply so they could get to class, guess who ended up with tickets! That was the end of that policy (there are much smarter ways to deal with permit renewal) and is the reason that I smiled so broadly while reading this post. Thanks!

[Shirl]

We get so many people wanting us to not enforce meters for this reason or that; there are days that I want to tell the officers not to enforce for 2 weeks and let the citizens see what parking life would be like without us.

[Mark]

You know your needing a vacation when white sand becomes pavement and towels become cars!