I think the Nutter Administration has already proposed increasing the local parking garage tax. http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/1736080.php?

If that is the case, I can see Cutler's argument that meter rates should be increased to push folks who drive around and around to look for an open spot on the street into a garage. If you eliminate those folks from waiting until the right moment, you have less cars on the road.

That being said, I agree that we should focus on buiding a downtown with less--not more parking garages and where folks can rely on safe, reliable and clean public transit to get themselves in and out of town. Until we do that, it does seem anything is a tempoary solution.

When the last train for me (R8) leaves center city at 10 on a Saturday evening - it's not even about safe & clean - the option of using public transportation is nonexistent.

It isn't nice, certainly, but if you go through Saffron's blogs, you read (as Ray notes) this scold of the good Congressman:

(T)oday, we have mayoral candidate Chaka Fattah...suggesting that Philadelphia impose a congestion tax on motorists to discourage driving into the city during rush hour and raise money for transit. (It's a tax similar to the one that London instituted.) Will someone tell Chaka he's been away from Philly too long? Proposing such a tax for modestly congested Philadelphia suggests he doesn't have a clue about the real nature of the city's car problem. Center City isn't suffering from too much congestion; it has too little. Right now, it's way too easy to drive into town.

There is a problem however, and it's twofold. One is parking, which has been discussed here; the other is the architectural monstrosities that are garages, which Ray also touched upon and obviously is a cause for concern for the architecture critic.

Pleasantly, SEPTA is the obvious, best answer to both. Better service within a pretty well-designed system with half as many bus stops would be well-timed incentives for increased ridership to go along with gas price realities. Getting a line to run down Delaware Avenue, but not to casinos, is a design improvement that the next State Senator might make a priority, especially since there figures to be an opening on the Transportation Committee in Harrisburg. Requesting a seat on the SEPTA Board and the DRPA would also be useful, if I may recycle some old policy from my laptop. Hi Gaetano, btw.

Replacing our antiquated payment system has been talked about as a top priority. It would make the system faster, easier, and one you'd be more apt to use again, but I don't recall hearing a date for implementation.

Because they'd be so expensive, large projects to expand service to places like Reading and King of Prussia probably are contingent in the short term on Obama's winning; and yes, I do love it when we have simple, tangible ways of showing how the Great Big presidential election affects everyday life. Sometimes in between media coverage of Berlin speeches and the dastardly absurdity of Republican messaging tactics, the election itself--and the mind-bogglingly huge import of winning--becomes temporarily unreal. Which it isn't.

Anyway, I couldn't get a good link to Inga Saffron's last column on the proposed Delaware Avenue projects, but apparently that's currently further along than other large projects that aren't rail and station replacement. Again, I really hope that the long overdue River Rail service plan becomes a goal for area representatives in Harrisburg, City Hall, and Washington. Such a rail line has been an integral part of the Penn Praxis plan from the beginning and could likely make the plan's worthy goals easier to achieve.

Other possible infrastructure improvements, I imagine, would involve replacing equipment, sprucing up more stations, and possible restoring trolley service to places where it's disappeared. I wonder if anyone knows whether it would be cost effective to restore trackless trolleys to places like my family's old South Philly home street, Morris on the westside of Broad.

Enjoying a relaxing summer, by the way, Gaetano. I really got to savor two long books I'd been saving to read for awhile: Louis Menand's The Metaphysical Club, a beautifully written Pulitzer winner on the history of American Pragmatism--and by connection a lot of the Post-Civil War Progressive Movement--that explains why ideas are social things, and that suggests a timely and time-tested recipe for mixing philosophy, everyday life, and Left wing politics; I recommend it to everyone who reads and writes here; and John Gardner's lost masterpiece The Sunlight Dialogues, the best case he ever made for Moral Fiction. Recommended to those who sensed that Gravity's Rainbow--for all its bravura rendering of culture, popular and otherwise--was written by someone who had given up on society, and were made disquiet by that.

Pricing Parking:
Taking away the question of congestion off the table for the moment, the increase in parking charges is recently popular trend in transportation planning circles and originates in the work of UCLA planning professor Donald Shoup. You can read his 800 page tome on the subject, The High Cost of Free Parking.

Among the many topics in Shoup's book, is his proposal for efficient pricing of parking. Essentially, parking rates are low when spaces are plenty and high when spaces are scarce. The idea is that parking is always available but that when fewer are available it is more expensive. This does not necessarily encourage people to drive downtown because while on-street parking may be available, it will not be cheap. As on-street parking fills up the price increases, people may use the parking spots but will likely park for a shorter period of time, instead of leaving the car parked for a while. The increased price and availability of parking encourages people who do drive to make brief shopping trips and increases the utilization of the parking spot. For businesses, this has increased the number of shoppers (examples in Shoup's book). Theoretically, the increased availability of on-street parking would encourage parking garages to rethink their ridiculous fee structure to become more in line with the on-street parking prices.

Shoup also develops applications of his variable pricing policy for residential areas.

I believe they are going to test out variable pricing for parking in the West Village in New York soon. See also video interview w/ Shoup.

Congestion:
Shoup argues that a great deal of congestion (perhaps 40%) in urban areas is people "cruising" for parking spots. Because garages are so expensive and on-street parking so cheap for short-term parking, there is a great incentive to cruise around for parking. Just think for a minute about how often people talk of driving around "looking for parking." Theoretically, if variable pricing was implemented then prices would be high in popular areas and low in less popular areas, but the pricing would be relatively smooth across space and easy to figure out. There would be no real incentive to search around for parking because you could figure out where parking is cheap/expensive and decide how far you want to walk to your destination (after you park). As noted above, parking garages would theoretically come into line with pricing on the street. According to Shoup, the effect of implementing variable pricing is that a large portion of those cruising for parking (up to 40%) of congestion would be eliminated.

The larger issues about whether congestion is bad depends on what you mean by bad / bad for whom.

transit vs driving
If the goal is to have more people chose transit instead of driving, I think part of a long-term strategy to achieve that is to "get the pricing right" for parking. There are many other other things that need/should/could be done, but this is on step that moves towards that goal.

where does the money go
Finally, variable pricing generally increases revenue from parking. I would ask where this money is going. Is it going back to the PPA's coffers or being invested elsewhere, such as pedestrian space, transit, etc.