Over-Th-Hill Parking

A great deal has been written, especially since the war, on off street parking. You have heard of the crying need for more off street parking in order to meet the needs of shoppers and thereby avoid a process of decentralization. Many parking authorities have been established and millions of dollars of public money invested in park­ ing facilities to provide space for all comers on a completely unselective basis. In other words, all who have desired to drive a private auto­ mobile into the heart of the city have been encouraged to do so by the construction of such facilities regardless of whether it brought shoppers or not. There are a number of pros and cons concerning this procedure which cannot be gone into in this paper. While the provision of parking space for all comers is highly questionable, it would seem clear that off street parking is necessary in this age to serve the potential purchaser of goods. The difficulty is to provide the needed facility in a location that will meet the need, and to limit its use to the shopper only. Other problems are allocation of cost of a parking facility, and imposition of such a non-productive function on existing land uses where high land values prevail. Such drastic solutions have been proposed of requiring merchants, through zoning regulations, to furnish their own facilities. Such a method would be ruinous to most merchants and would be quite im­ practical to impose on existing patterns of business and land use. It is enough to say, by way of introduction, that an ingenious system has been devised which meets these various objections. This system serves only shoppers, thereby avoiding adding to unnecessary street congestion. It avoids the use of public funds. Cost is born by those directly benefitted, and such cost is operational entirely. No capital investment is required. It brings into use low cost land instead of the high cost space in the retail district. This simple but ingenious system was devised and initiated in Nashville, Tennessee by G. Vernon Pegram. He designated it OverTh-Hill parking. Although it was tailor made for conditions as he