An Assessment of Parking Fare Rate Deregulation in Taipei

Abstract

During the period of exhibition events such as COMPTEX, the traffic in downtown Taipei is often congested. To manage parking demand effectively, city officials had proposed to open bidding for public parking facilities with or without regulated rates. The regulated rates are calculated based on the optimisation of total social welfare which includes consumer and producer surplus as well as the external costs of all modes of transport. We find that the deregulated parking fees are mostly higher than the existing rates, while the regulated rates are generally higher than the deregulated rates, except for a few special cases. Although raising parking fees seems to be inevitable and is justified by the optimisation of social welfare, it is not necessarily a politically correct decision for local politicians. It is expected that new regulated rates to be lower than projected rates, but higher than existing rates.