Parking at Fenway--Priceless

MOST OF AMERICA PROBABLY felt that the Red Sox ending their 86 year drought and winning the 2004 World Series was an immaculate blessing for the city of Boston. But the success of the Sox has not come without its problems. For one thing, parking around Boston's historic Fenway Park has become awfully expensive.

Complaining about the price of parking at Fenway has become a "Swallows Returning to Capistrano" story for Boston's media and politicians. Every now and then attention gets trained on the story by a local news outlet. The politicians then register their anger. Shortly thereafter, life around the park returns to normal. Last year's Red Sox post-season triggered one of these carping paroxysms; so too did last week's Opening Day tussle between the Red Sox and the New York Yankees.

The Boston Globe began the latest cycle of hand-wringing by pointing to a gas station near the ballpark that was allegedly charging patrons $100 to "pahk their cahs" (as the locals say) before heading into Fenway for the Opening Day festivities. This figure struck many of the city's luminaries as exorbitant. As Boston's Mayor Thomas P. Menino put it, "Someone came up to me and said 'I just paid $100 to park.' I blew my top."

PARKING AROUND FENWAY is a display of free market capitalism at its finest. There is an option for getting to and from the Fens for every wallet, or at least every wallet that can afford the not inconsiderable price of attending a game in the first place.

For the cost conscious, Boston's mostly-above-ground subway, the MBTA, has two stops within easy walking distance of the park. And around the ballpark, fanning out about a mile in every direction, are a wealth of parking options. Unsurprisingly, the closer one gets to the park, the more expensive the parking becomes. One also pays a premium for easy egress after the game concludes. It should also be noted that the lots surrounding the park compete aggressively with one another--there has never been so much as a whiff of collusion amongst the lots' proprietors.

The lot at the center of the controversy, Leahy's Mobil where a Boston Globe photographer paid $100 to park on Opening Day, is often one of the most expensive parking options. And it should be. It's the most convenient lot for Red Sox parking. Leahy's Mobil offers a rapid exit from the neighborhood because of its location on Brookline Avenue, and is so close to Fenway that even the weak-armed Johnny Damon could throw a ball into the park while standing at one of the station's eight gas-pumps.

By comparison, the Landmark Shopping Mall about 200 yards down the road offers underground parking for $20 a game. If you don't mind walking the extra distance and being snarled in post-game traffic, it's a good deal. (For its part, Leahy's management denies charging regular patrons $100 and insists that only media personnel who arrived well before the opener's game time--and stayed well after--had to pay this top rate.)

BUT REGARDLESS OF WHERE THEY ARE and what they charge, none of the lots use coercive or deceptive measures on customers. Typically each lot has a worker standing on the street waving a bright orange flag to advise motorists of parking availability and the price. Motorists that find a given lot's price too steep are free to drive further away from the ballpark and seek a lot closer to their desired price point.

Nonetheless, following the kabuki ritual, Mayor Menino is now vowing action. In a letter to the area's parking lot owners, Menino wrote, "'I am aware of the concept of marketing and pricing for supply and demand. However, large increases in pricing adversely impact the surrounding businesses and places the economic vitality of the Fenway area in jeopardy." The mayor is silent on how an influx of high rollers willing to pay $100 to park their cars would damage the neighborhood's "economic vitality."

The mayor's fondness for the market and the law of supply and demand is somewhat questionable. As he told the Globe, "My goal is to have control over the fees." A Boston attorney who regularly parks at Leahy's Mobil when he attends Red Sox games was disturbed by the mayor's disregard for free market principles. "As a lawyer who practices in Boston," he said during an interview, "I'm quite thankful that the mayor has yet to see fit to regulate my rates."

BOSTON'S MAYOR CLAIMS the purest of motives in this miniature dust-up: He is merely standing up for the little guy consumer against the rapacious capitalism of those bully parking lot owners. But the entire scenario provides a tidy case study for how Boston-style liberalism has gone so wrong.