When my students and I studied cruising for parking in a 15-block business district in Los Angeles, we found the average cruising time was 3.3 minutes, and the average cruising distance half a mile (about 2.5 times around the block). This may not sound like much, but with 470 parking meters in the district, and a turnover rate for curb parking of 17 cars per space per day, 8,000 cars park at the curb each weekday. Even a small amount of cruising time for each car adds up to a lot of traffic.

Over the course of a year, the search for curb parking in this 15-block district created about 950,000 excess vehicle miles of travel — equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, or four trips to the moon. And here’s another inconvenient truth about underpriced curb parking: cruising those 950,000 miles wastes 47,000 gallons of gas and produces 730 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If all this happens in one small business district, imagine the cumulative effect of all cruising in the United States.

We’ve all been in this situation before, but to see the cumulative impact of our individual actions is embarrassing.  Shoup obviously believes this is simply a pricing problem – if street parking is free or nearly free, the incentives are out of whack.  Like George Costanza in Seinfeld, we believe paying to park in a garage is a sign of failure.  But Shoup doesn’t believe we should all stop looking for street parking.  If priced properly, there should always be open spaces for those willing to pay for the true cost of that spot.

The demand for parking is certainly driven, in part, by our need to shop.  Our shopping obsession makes us susceptible to campaigns like the (RED) campaign, which urges us to buy an assortment of products from brand name companies like GAP and Motorola, that promise to funnel some portion of the profits to The Global Fund, a not-for-profit treating HIV victims in Africa.  (RED), which was co-founded by Bono, has made quite a splash, largely through the backing of its high profile corporate partners, raising an estimated $25 million for TGF.  The campaign, however, seems to be lacking a sense of humor.  An alternative site, buylesscrap.org, has emerged to raise obvious questions about the need to buy an iPod or a Razr phone to support charitable organizations.  Additionally, the (RED) campaign seems to suffer from some transparency and fuzzy math issues, and the buylesscrap folks are just pointing this out.  The (RED) campaign, with its mandatory red offerings and compulsive branding, takes itself a little too seriously, and, like all things related to consumption, seems to miss the point of its efforts.  (RED) says it’s all about serving the suffering people of Africa, but one can’t help but think (RED) is really about the success of (RED).

Whether you agree or disagree with the methods of the (RED) campaign, the fact that our giving needs to be pried out of us through the lure of shiny gadgets and clothes is sad.  Even defenders of (RED), like Paul Vallely of The Independent, admit as much:

[N]ot everyone gives to charities. There were two areas yet untapped - the private sector and consumers who like buying stuff, like the idea of helping others, but who are too idle or too self-centered to actually get up and do anything.

Yup, that’s us.  But somehow we still find the motivation to circle the block endlessly looking for a parking space to buy an iPod.