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Blood from a parking meter
Cities grappling with budget holes are turning to drivers for extra revenue. That means privatized parking, longer meter hours, no more free Sundays and much stricter parking meter enforcement. Many businesses and residents are ticked off. In at least one case, there's been physical violence.
Let's begin with the parking situation in Chicago. It is no less than a political disaster:
The mayor won City Council approval of privatizing the city's parking meters in a 40-5 vote last year. A 75-year contract was awarded to Chicago Parking Meters LLC in February for $1.15 billion.
The city said the money from the sale would help balance the municipal budget and bolster Chicago's financial reserves.
Since then, the deal has caused the mayor and the council major grief, as independent analysts and the inspector general said the city sold the meter rights for far less than they were worth, and drivers decried dramatic meter price increases and problems with broken or dysfunctional meters.
Some people took out their anger on the parking meters themselves.
So, last month, Mayor Richard Daley proposed giving each Chicago driver a single get-out-of-a-ticket card per year. It would only apply if the driver was late by five minutes or less. The gesture was met by even more anger:
Igor Stamenkovic works in Chicago and parks on Wabash Avenue near Adams Street. He has to make frequent trips to his car to avoid parking fines.
"Walk with me, otherwise I will get a ticket," he said. As he fed the parking pay box, he said Daley's proposed grace period "doesn't make sense."
Stamenkovic said Daley allowed increases in meter prices and more metered hours in the day, then said, "'I'll give you five minutes.'"
"I think it's ridiculous," Stamenkovic said.
Here in Los Angeles, many parking meters now operate two hours longer, until 8pm. The city is also considering the privatization of several parking garages:
"This is a critical piece of our strategy to maintain the city's financial standing and credit rating," said City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, the top budget analyst at City Hall. Santana made the recommendation with Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller, the council's budget analyst...
Unlike in Chicago, Santana and Miller are not recommending privatizing city parking meters -- that would probably face fierce opposition by some council members. They also call for L.A. to retain authority over parking rates at the garages, although parking costs would almost certainly increase.
In San Francisco, officials are considering charging for parking on Sundays as a way to avoid cuts in the public transportation budget. That seems like a reasonable compromise. But in Oakland, people are upset because it appears new parking meters could cost more to install than the revenue they will generate.
And in Toledo, Ohio, downtown parking meters are literally causing fights. From the Toledo Blade:
Ahmad Mahmoud, owner of the Hat Trick Bar and Grill... said he was temporarily closing his bar most nights of the week after a ParkSmart employee punched him in the face.
That occurred, he admitted, after he spit in the parking officer's face after what Mr. Mahmoud said was one too many parking tickets in front of his business.
Even though they haven't started fights with ParkSmart employees, several other downtown business owners say the downtown parking authority is driving them, and their customers, a bit crazy.
A Toledo bookstore closed last month, citing in part the relentless parking enforcement.
It's pretty predictable that cities would try to generate more revenue from parking, but at what cost? Businesses closing? Citizens vandalizing meters (and each other)?
Having almost gotten into a fight once with a mean-spirited LA parking officer, I can attest to the nerve this strikes with people. And when it appears that cities are reaching into the pockets of their financially-struggling citizens, it's not surprising there's blood on the sidewalk.
Your thoughts?
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As Adam Smith pointed out, when you hire people they often end up taking care of themselves first unless you prevent them from doing so. That is called the agency problem. As managerial capitalism replaced owner capitalism the agency problem has become extreme especially in the last three decades (see Battle for the Soul of Capitalism). In the federal government the agency problem has led to printing trillions of dollars for financial corporations, the medical and military industrial complexes while offering comparatively nothing to the bottom 95 percent of Americans during the Great Recession. On a local government level it has led to gouging citizens with new and increased fees, the adversarial and predatory use of regulations such as traffic regulations to preserve government jobs. From the perspective of ordinary Americans ‘gotcha’ government is moving in lock step with ‘gotcha’ capitalism.
<i>In the federal government the agency problem has led to printing trillions of dollars for financial corporations, the medical and military industrial complexes while offering comparatively nothing to the bottom 95 percent of Americans during the Great Recession.</i><p>
The federal government have nothing to offer. The solution is not to print trillions of dollars for the bottom 95% of Americans either. The solution is to stop printing. Just stop it. Have the audacity of nope.
Parking meters have also been extended in Washington, DC. It used to be that you could visit The Mall on a Saturday without feeding the meter -- no more. That means a much quicker trip to the museums (2-hours or less). I understand the city needs the money, but it's disappointing. I have a feeling many more tourists to the capitol will leave with parking tickets.
There is always the Metro! Oh wait, they are raising prices as well. I guess they need to run empty trains/buses late at night...
The Metro bosses have a meeting in downtown DC at the end of a workday and expect people from all sides to show up. Seems like only a specific group could make that meeting.
At the heart of the issue is the perception that parking meter violations are victimless crimes. Indeed, no one is physically harmed, but when someone overstays their meter, that means someone else cannot park there. Recently <a href=" http://blog.robpitingolo.org/2010/01/if-citizens-could-give-parking-tick... wrote</a> that the perception would change if citizens, rather than agents of the state, could issue violations. In cities, parking is zero-sum. A space taken by one person cannot be occupied by another. Mass transit concerns aside, meters are really tools necessary to keep the market for parking functioning.
Looks like there is a lot of "devil in the details" going on, even in Chi-town. Once, I parked near Amtrak in downtown Sacramento (fairly good mass transit there); over the weekend, the space was painted RED and I was ticketed! Later, I found out Amtrak was offering bus-to-station from Reno for $2!
Who knew?
And yes, they voided the ticket...
The City of Chicago did a piss poor job of running its parking operation. Who would have thought that in a City the size of Chicago prior to the concession 25,000 metered spaces would only charge twenty five cents an hour. This perpetueated the car dependancy syndrome which leads to pollution, reliance on fossil fuels and an extraordinarily unfriendly pedestrian and bicycling environment. Not to mention that non-market based parking is the principal cause of the decline of the mass transit system which then has to be ultimately subsidized by taxpayers (i.e. you and me).
So what's it going to be? Cheap taxpayer subsidized parking for the suburban motorists or more cops, firemen and better schools? I for one, would rather see the parking increase to such a level that trully makes mass transit a viable option. Better for the environment and for our future.
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