Downtown curbside parking capacity

Current debates on downtown parking policy have been concentrating on downtown parking pricing, while overlooking downtown parking capacity. This paper focuses on how much curbside to allocate to parking when the private sector provides garage parking. In the first-best optimum, no cruising for parking occurs, and only curbside parking is provided when demand is low relative to street capacity, both curbside parking and garage parking are provided when demand in intermediate, and only garage parking is provided when demand is high. In the second-best optimum where curbside parking is underpriced, cruising for parking occurs only when both curbside and garage parking are both present. As the fee differential between garage and curbside parking increases, cruising for parking becomes more severe, and the range of demand levels over which curbside and garage parking are both present shrinks and eventually disappears.