Dec 4, 2008
When Privatization Goes Wrong
When an hour of parking costs more than an hour of minimum wage work, there is a problem. Parking meters are not meant as sources of income. They’re meant to help lower traffic, increase public transportation, and otherwise help the roadways. Chicago is now putting forth a $6.50 / hour parking fees downtown. This would kill downtown business traffic as well as raising rates of employees who may have to pay the parking fees for their cars while they work.
The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago is trying to get “quickie” approval for a proposal to privatize the city’s parking meters. Under the 75 year lease, Chicago’s 36,000 parking meters would be controlled by a partnership that includes Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners and LAZ Parking. This partnership will, naturally, raise prices. Critics of the proposal say that charging $6.50 an hour by 2013 to park downtown would hurt local businesses.
More troubling is the potential for a conflict of interest:
Ald. William Banks (36th), one of the mayor’s staunchest City Council supporters, warned that charging $6.50-an-hour to park at Loop meters and forcing drivers to feed those meters 24/7 would be a “definite deterrent to people visiting the downtown area,” hurting retailers and restaurants.
Parking enforcement could get tougher if the contractor exercises its right to “supplement” the city’s ticket-writing efforts to “protect its revenue.”
Supplement the city’s ticket writing to “protect its revenue?” Well, that seems like a conflict of interest, doesn’t it? Consumerist expects to receive a lot of email from angry motorists should this deal go through.
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