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Markets in everything
Drivers in three US cities will soon be able to earn a buck or two just for vacating a parking space. SpotScout is a website that matches people about to leave a parking spot with those looking for one. Using a cellphone, drivers tell SpotScout when they will leave their parking spot, where it is, and how much they will sell this information for. The site, to be launched next month in New York, Boston and San Francisco, matches this information with people looking for a space.
Here is the link; the pointer is from Daniel Akst. If you don't already know it, here is Dan's article on how to best help other people.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 16, 2006 at 06:12 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
SpotScout also seems to be making a market in actual parking places, as opposed to information on likely street openings. As in allowing one to sublet a private slot or driveway as a timeshare -- though I wonder about the legal implications about this. Would all the regulations affecting commercial parking operators equally apply?
Posted by: Cronaca at Jun 16, 2006 11:25:34 AM
Very interesting. The wonderful ways of free economics in every day life.
Posted by: Tiberius at Jun 16, 2006 2:54:32 PM
Is it possible to short SpotScout?
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Jun 16, 2006 3:21:36 PM
I had this idea once when I lived in Northern California. Now, I think it's a dumb idea. But I have a better one.
I live now in Santiago, Chile, a city with much fewer car-density problems than San Francisco, but still with a few neighborhood where it is difficult to find a parking space. The parking problems that Californians are surely aware of, though, simply do not happen here, for one very simple reason: parking attendants. Yes, the parking meter is apparently not economically efficient here and almost every city street with demand for parking spaces has an attendant collecting parking fees. And naturally, the attendant will flag you into any available spot.
But it gets better: these attendants, working for the city, knock off in the evening, and the freelancers take over. You're not legally obliged to pay them, but most people apparently find their services worthy of a 25-cent tip or so.
In San Francisco, there is no shortage of homeless people with nothing better to do than solicit change. But I never saw one of them performing the easy and tremendously helpful work of helping people park. Why is this, I wonder? San Franciscans are obviously willing to pay a lot more than a buck for an easy parking spot, and the homeless are in a privileged position of being able to disburse them. Maybe they just haven't had the idea yet and someone needs to teach the technique to a few people...
Posted by: neil at Jun 16, 2006 6:06:38 PM
As an university economist I have been interested in
the application of the "congestion pricing" literature
to the typical university parking problem. While
unique in some ways, it is a variant of a peakload
pricing problem. This post gives me an idea for a
student project.
b.davis
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