There are a lot of reasons people use the curbs in their communities — think parking, dropping people off or picking them up and deliveries, among many others. Over the past few years, really since the COVID-19 pandemic began, cities have been rethinking how they can and should use their curb space.
Bob Pishue, a transportation analyst at the firm INRIX, which has announced a new tool to help cities manage their curb space, says curbs have always been a contentious spot in cities, with lots of demand on a fairly fixed amount of space.
Pishue joined The Show to talk about how are cities thinking about how to use the curb space they have in 2024.
Full conversation
BOB PISHUE: Cities and, you know, municipalities are trying to work on how to best maximize the efficiency of the curb, but also, trying to do things like, revitalizing downtowns through open eateries. They call them streeteries, in a lot of cities. So, that's opening that up. And during COVID, I think we remember when access to closed buildings or being enclosed in a building was not a great idea. A lot of cities opened up the curve to that. So that's something that a lot of cities and advocates are trying to keep going.
So, you have kind of placemaking, that's what we call kind of placemaking, or revitalization. You have the classic parking demand from just, you know, drivers, whether you're dropping kids off at school or going to the store, or doctor's office, whatever it may be, and then the onset of added freight deliveries that we've seen. So, we have more uses, more activity, but in relatively the same amount of space.
MARK BRODIE: Well, so the basic laws of supply and demand suggest that if you're trying to do more things in the same roughly amount of space, that space becomes infinitely more valuable. And I wonder if that sort of amps up the disagreements and the fights within cities and different users about what to do with it.
PISHUE: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's hard to avoid, but anything, things that are public tend to have people on both sides and it ups the discussion, right?
So, you can understand if you're a delivery company, I'm not gonna name any, but if you're a company that delivers stuff, you want more loading zones, you know, on every block or something like that. But if you're a, you know, a taco truck or a restaurant truck or something like that, and you want access to that curb to do some business, and you get the permits or whatever it may be, you may be fighting for that space. If you're a cyclist, or if you do use those micro mobility services, those have to be in convenient spots where people get off of transit and move, but those are also high demand places for parking.
So you've got all of this activity, kind of in a way, fighting over this public resource, and trying to determine how best to allocate it, maybe price it, all the while, you're trying to keep congestion low around that. So, all of this is a very delicate balance that city officials and public officials are trying to deal with right now.
BRODIE: You mentioned pricing, and if I'm not mistaken, traditionally parking was the main thing that people had to pay for on the curb. Are cities experimenting with charging for other uses on the curb?
PISHUE: Yeah, some are looking at that. So, you have that like in New York City, for example, like paid commercial parking, those types of things. We do see pricing, you know, going on in a lot of cities. A lot of downtowns charge for parking, and some of them are trying to do more, you know, hourly parking rates, but by the hour of day. So, let's say it would charge more at 8 a.m., you know, during that morning rush hour, than it would at 10 p.m.
BRODIE: So, how do cities go about trying to figure out how best to use their curb? I mean, obviously a place like New York City is very different than a place like Phoenix, same kinds of needs, but probably on different scales and in different places, you know, what each user might need in a specific location.
PISHUE: Oh, you're absolutely right. So, you know, New York is kind of the classic example, only because it's the densest downtown that we have in the country, right? And so, you do take a place like Phoenix, which is fairly dense, but over a large land area, and you kind of have less of that downtown problem. Where, where I see deliveries of both people and goods, I took a look at Phoenix, and obviously the airports stick out as number one. And that's likely a delivery of people, but also some goods.
So, it's less of a concentrated problem, but it all, to answer your question, it's really what does the city want, right? We have to put goals out there and then try to achieve those goals. So, some cities try to achieve, let's say, carbon reduction. Well, if you're interested in reducing carbon, you may not be too keen on cars coming into dense urban cores. So, in that case, you know, many of them will try to allocate more space to things like micro mobility, you know, maybe even taking out parking altogether to put in cycle lanes. If it's about, let's say, accommodating vehicle trips or, you know, something like that, then you may see more on and off street parking.
So it's really important that when cities go to analyze it, you know, their situation to really have those clear goals in mind, and also have performance metrics that they can measure against to see whether it's achieving the goal or not.
BRODIE: How much do cities try to futureproof themselves when they're looking at these things? And I think about a place like Phoenix where, you know, there are a number of autonomous vehicles on the roads that, you know, is another use if you're dropping somebody off, kind of like a rideshare, you know, you need a place to drop people off. Like, do cities try to think about or figure out what new technologies might be coming out and what new uses they might have for curbs and try to, you know, plan accordingly by that?
PISHUE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of them, and, and I think that's kind of for us transportation geeks, that is a huge, you know, promise that's on the horizon. Already, we have big data, we have machine learning, those types of things to try to really maximize that efficiency. So I think as far as pouring concrete, you know, to build more curbs, we're not seeing that much of that occur, outside of, you know, obviously residential neighborhoods as those come online. But on those areas that already have it, it's gonna be more about management and trying to use, you know, trying to create a market driven, pricing program to try to maximize that.
BRODIE: Are you finding that most cities or some large number of cities are taking a look at their curb usage at this moment, or is it really just sort of like the cities you're working with or a place like New York City, places like that, or is this the kind of thing that's kind of across the board?
PISHUE: I think it's more across the board. I mean, I, you don't see it as much in, let's say, some of the smaller cities. I will say the cities that I have seen, even smaller cities are those, you know, anchored by a core major city. But, I think a lot of cities are looking at this, more than what you'd kind of think.
So, again, I think it kind of does go back to that purpose. What are we trying to solve here? Is it trying to get people into the office, trying to get people to stay in an area, spend money, those make it more friendly towards tourism? Whatever the purpose may be, I think, you know, cities are looking at it, but this is definitely a big area that cities across the country are looking at.
