Parking Meters
Felix Salmon writes a bit about Chicago’s somewhat backdoor effort to increase its street parking meters from their current $0.25 an hour to $1.00 an hour next month and $2.00 an hour in 2013:
Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, is absolutey on the side of the angels when it comes to green initiatives, and nothing would be greener than managing to reduce the amount of auto traffic downtown. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet — Chicagoans are more attached to their cars than ever. And so maybe this parking-meter initiative is the municipal equivalent of a CEO hiring McKinsey to come in and recommend job cuts: it’s a way of doing what needs to be done while somehow managing to blame someone else.
In any event, Chicago should get much more than $1.157 billion in benefit from this deal. Underpriced on-street parking is the bane of many large cities’ existence: it results in a huge amount of needless congestion as drivers circle around endlessly, looking for a spot to park. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the benefits from lower congestion are larger than the up-front cash that Chicago is receiving.
This is true, but it should be said that the positive environmental benefit of reduced idling isn’t close to being the main benefit of pricing your street parking correctly. The main benefit is just the fact that if parking is priced correctly — i.e., in relationship to the supply and demand — then parking will be widely available. It ought to be the case that if you drive up to any block in the city, there will usually be a parking space available there for you. On some blocks at some times of day, that may mean that parking is very expensive. But that would merely mean that ability to park on that block at that time is very valuable and that making it available is having large social benefits.
In general, the market price of street parking should be very similar to the market price of garage parking. Since a garage is more secure and protected from the elements, that has certain advantages. But a street spot might be more convenient. So you’d be looking at rough similarity. And in parts of the city where there’s no viable market in garage building, that’s a market signal that parking demand is low and therefore street parking should be very cheap. But where garages are charging a lot, street parking should also be expensive. Among other things, that would reduce the need for new construction to be accompanied by expansive parking garages.
Perhaps more important, it would reduce the tendency for conversations about any new development to become immediately dominated by people’s fear of parking shortages. The whole shortage phenomenon is (as shortages tend to be) a symptom of bad pricing policy. Chicago is a big city with a vibrant downtown and tons of economic activity. Space is limited and expensive. Unless you charge more than a quarter for it, you’ll get shortages.
65 Responses to “Parking Meters”
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December 4th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Yes, but is $1.00/hr. or even $2.00/hr. enough to make any difference?
December 4th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I can’t believe on-street parking in a major city could possibly be only 25c an hour. The idea is ludicrous- the expense of parking is one of the primary motivations we have for taking public transportation. We pay between $3 and $8 an hour- depending on where you are in the city. For that much, you’re better off paying $1.50 and taking the bus.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
You could also reduce lines at the Post Office by making the cost of mailing something prohibitively expensive, but we don’t do that, because we tend to think mailing something is a public service whose price should be determined by what it costs to operate the service, rather than market demand. Implicit in your posts on this stuff–but never articulated–is the claim that use of city parking is not a public service. But if that’s the case, then why not wholly privatize parking?
December 4th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Was in downtown Chicago this weekend. Price to park in a private lot for an hour and a half on a weekday afternoon? $22. Needless to say, no street parking was available. Price to park overnight at a downtown hotel? $41 per night. Yes, parking is expensive. As it should be, cretins like Al notwithstanding.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Currently parking in the Loop (downtown) is usually $3/hr. Its $0.25/hr in the outlying neighborhoods. Even $3/hr is a bargain.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
As a Chicagoan who’s thrilled by this move, let me point and laugh at Yglesias for having no idea at all what he’s talking about and just coughing up half-remembered ideas from something he read once. Chicago has shortages of downtown parking not just because of bad pricing policy but because there’s a giant river and multiple sets of rail installations in the most desirable areas in the business district, plus the huge geographical bound of a rather large lake (with its attendant splendid lakefront park) cutting off a quarter of remote parking.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
“Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, is absolutey on the side of the angels when it comes to green initiatives, and nothing would be greener than managing to reduce the amount of auto traffic downtown.”
Written like a true hack. You want to know what would be a really green initiative? How about a recycling program that isn’t a world class sick joke? If Chicago had a recycling program that worked than Chicagoans wouldn’t have felt like it was salt being poured on wounds when Daley proposed a tax on water bottles on the basis that they were cluttering up landfills. Try reading the Chicago Reader, which does an admirable job of documenting the corruption, inefficiency, and sheer stupidity of how Chicago government “works”. Or better yet, try living there. I know I don’t miss it.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Also, if the city of Chicago really wanted to cut back on auto traffic they would somehow develop a transit system that works. But the CTA is in shambles, and is a case study of how to ruin a perfectly good transit system. Upping parking meter costs sure gets more money for the city government though, which I’m sure will go towards the pious goal of displacing poor people from there homes to pave way for the Olympics.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I don’t know, Daley is definitely on the side of the angels when it comes to green initiatives, so long as those are defined either as a) proposals that look really good so long as you don’t pick at them too much and are then implemented in a corrupt and inept fashion or b) sound proposals that the federal government will pay for.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Daley is on the side of angels when green initiatives can be done at little cost and are more symbolic than substantive.
This is a short term solution to the city’s budget deficit.
The vast majority of the meters in this city are in the city’s neighborhoods. The limited number of metered street parking in the loop is $3-3.50/hour, so the situation as described by Yglesias isn’t quite as relevent. If the city were to take this revenue and boost its public transportation capabilities, that would be fine. But, more likely, after they use this one time infusion to help offset the huge city budget deficit, the rest will find itself into the nether regions of Daley’s TIF’s.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
But this only makes sense if you have any reasonable alternative to your car.
Chicago’s transit system has been limping along thanks to some major failures on both the state and Federal level (and, arguably, some poor management within the city too, although I think that’s a less significant factor). Every year seems to bring new, dire warnings of a “doomsday” situation with severe service cuts and fare increases. The Governor seems almost entirely uninterested in that situation (see for example his 11th hour demand for free rides for the elderly and war veterans — throwing the CTA’s finances into total disarray http://www.cdobs.com/archive/local-media-feeds/blagojevich-throws-wrench-in-deal-with-demand-for-free-rides-for-seniors,690).
But even beyond the actual deterioration of the system, it’s also not particularly well suited to how Chicago works today. It’s almost all centered on getting people downtown, mainly from Lakefront neighborhoods. There are no plans for anything like DC’s proposed Purple Line connected far-flung segments. Instead, the CTA’s major project consists of better connections between the airports and downtown — fine for business, but not a big improvement for those who actually live in the city.
I agree that limited capacity should be priced accordingly. And Chicago has a lot of rules that deincentivize driving (including an ever-increasing number of residential zones that carry fairly large penalties for violators). But raising the cost of driving without giving people other realistic transportation options is simply punitive; it’s not “progressive” by any definition of the word.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Chicago has a ton of transit infrastructure, but still, just about anybody in Chicago who can afford it, has a car. When I moved there in 1982, I left my car with my parents in LA figuring I’d be the complete urbanite and walk and take transit everywhere. After seven months, I called my parents and asked them to drive it out to me. Why? A lot of little reasons — I worked late all the time, and it was hard to get buses after 8 or 9pm. There were too many crazy people on the buses and subways. Waiting for a bus was no fun because the weather was cold in winter and hot in summer. Shopping without a car was time-consuming and difficult. With summer here, I wanted to get out of the city and go hiking and play golf on weekends.
So, Chicago is about as good a non-car environment as America gets other than NYC, and, yet, most people there get a car.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Agree with #12, and I say this as someone who doesn’t drive. If we’re talking about throwing around $1 trillion in infrastructure spending, building up some Chicago trams would be the thing to do. (They’re a natural fit given that the entire city is flat and laid out on a grid.) This nonsense about dicking around with parking meters, presumably to encourage middle-aged hotel maids to ride their bikes in Chicago in February or hop on the El at non-existent stops on the far south side is embarrassing when presented as bold progressive thinking rather than as a politically sound way to get a private company to foot the bill for upgrading meters to accept credit cards.
By the way I’m sure Matt knows that evil financial giant Morgan Stanley, which employs Billy Daley Jr., won the bid for this project, right? Nothing to see here…
December 4th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
One good thing about street parking being significantly cheaper than garage parking is that it’s a method for useful price discrimination (in the economic sense). Basically, it allows people who can’t afford exorbitant garage rates to save money at the cost of their time — you circle around the block for 15 or 20 minutes until you find a spot. The rich people don’t want to waste that much time, so they pay the garage rates.
Anyway, this has the obvious downside that you get a lot of circling traffic. But if the rates are all going to go up, I just wonder if we shouldn’t look for a way to keep the value provided by price discrimination.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Agree with NS: “But this only makes sense if you have any reasonable alternative to your car.”
It’s already a negative to me if a business is downtown, because I have to find somewhere to park. There’s no other good way to get there.
In other words, I think this is a situation where the demand is nearly independent of cost. To the extent that you CAN lower demand by increasing cost, you also lower the customer base for nearby businesses.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
To commenter 13 – that’s because, as illustrated earlier, neighborhood to neighborhood transit is a gigantic pain in the ass in this city. Spoken by someone who is carless on the fringes of where being carless is still a viable lifestyle (and seems less and less so as the cold sets in and the busses remain stacked).
December 4th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
…if parking is priced correctly — i.e., in relationship to the supply and demand — then parking will be widely available. It ought to be the case that if you drive up to any block in the city, there will usually be a parking space available there for you.
Actually, it makes more sense to set the price such that the parking is always just full-up, but with no one circling looking for a spot. If there are always empty spots, then there is waste. If there are cars circling for a spot, then there is waste.
The complication comes when you consider other social benefits and costs — e.g., maybe you want to deter people from driving, because of the traffic and pollution, and so you set the fee higher.
Hi Byron!
December 4th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Agreed that expensive parking should come with some sort of subsidy for poor people. To drastically hike up rates is to significantly curtail lower-income access to the city’s goods and services.
And if you do that, there is a second-order effect where your “parking-shortage” neighborhoods become even more gentrified (why sell to poor people who can’t afford to park?)
December 4th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Agreed that expensive parking should come with some sort of subsidy for poor people.
You could create some kind of transportation system which moves large numbers of people to popular areas with expensive parking for a small, relatively affordable fee.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Actually, it makes more sense to set the price such that the parking is always just full-up, but with no one circling looking for a spot.
Donald Shoup, who wrote the book on parking (The High Cost of Free Parking), says that a 15% vacancy rate on curbside parking is the ideal.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
“neighborhood to neighborhood transit is a gigantic pain in the ass in this city.”
Right. Chicago’s spokes system is good for commuting but it’s bad for shopping because most of the affordable Big Box shopping developments (the kind with shopping carts and low prices) take up too much space to go either downtown or along the lakefront. A lot of the big box discount shopping developments in Chicago in the 1990s where lakefront yuppies like myself want to shop went in along the old Clybourn industrial area in the Northwest. Getting from the north lakefront to the Clybourn shopping corridor by public transit was difficult, and getting home with 75 or 150 pounds of purchases was a nightmare.
So, lakefront liberals get cars so they can drive to do their shopping. And, then, since they have a car, they often decide they might as well drive to work. (By the way, driving down Lake Shore Drive with its magnificent views from Uptown is one of more pleasant commutes in the world.)
Really, going without a car is basically for single people without kids.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
You’re way off on this. If they raised street parking in crowded areas, the effect would actually be a shortage of garage parking. People are still going to drive their cars. Good thinking, but not practical.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Typical trust fund baby saying that poor people shouldn’t have the same access to public goods that rich people do. Typical trust fund Yglesias, with no regard for the poor. Why don’t we just put this clown in the Cato institute, because Yglesias does not represent the progress I want.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Street parking often has a secondary limitation, where you can’t buy more than 1-2 hours at a time, which should result in a slightly lower price, because some people are forced to opt for garages, giving you a lower overall demand.
But that’s a side issue, and $.25 an hour is nuts.
December 4th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
> I can’t believe on-street parking in a major
> city could possibly be only 25c an hour.
Because there was also an absolute limit (30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes depending on location). This introduced an element of basic fairness into the short-term parking system, and also gave people whose time was worth less than money a chance as well.
There is a basic issue of fairness here that MY and many of the commentors keep ignoring. Our society is not built just for the rich and those with more money than time; it is built for everyone. Daley taking all the reasonably-priced, time-limited parking meters and turning them into campaign contribution generators is not exactly fair.
Cranky
December 4th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
. Daley taking all the reasonably-priced, time-limited parking meters and turning them into campaign contribution generators is not exactly fair.
$1 to $2 an hour is reasonably-priced.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
You could create some kind of transportation system which moves large numbers of people to popular areas with expensive parking for a small, relatively affordable fee.
You could, in fact, do such a thing! I would note that (1) people drive cars for a reason [transit doesn't go everywhere, and cars can be more convenient], and (2) transit stops, especially rail transit stops, are often in expensive areas. So yes the rich people have plenty of options, but that’s not the issue.
Public transit is great, but at the margin it may not be the most cost-effective means of improving lower-income access to city services. I don’t claim to be an expert but I believe that’s a fair statement.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Saying that it would be a good idea assuming the city decides to plow a lot of money into public transportation seems equivalent to saying it’s a bad idea, given the realities of city government.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
transit doesn’t go everywhere
True. Transit typically has poor service to unpopular areas. Due to those areas’ relative unpopularity, public parking would likely be cheaper under a rational pricing scheme, if not free.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
For me the far bigger issue is the fact the city has forsaken a large revenue stream for the next 75 years due to their own financial mispractice. We have billions of dollars of TIF funds in reserve, that take away from general tax revenue, and yet we privatize the parking meters for a century to help alleviate budget pressures the next two years.
This issue has been grossly distorted. Loop parking isn’t a quarter and isn’t an issue. Public transport to the area is abundant, the only people who drive to the area drive in anticipation of paying $20-30 for a garage spot.
The majority of the neighborhoods where parking is a quarter are in neighborhoods where free sidestreet parking is only a short walk away. If the city would’ve raised it to a dollar themselves, the outcry would have been easy to avoid – a hell of a lot easier than the sales tax increase was anyways.
10-15 years from now, the bloated city government will face another deficit during the next recession. Except we won’t have any funds from Midway. It had already been privatized. We won’t have funds from the Skyway. It had already been privatized. We won’t have funds from meters. They had already been privatized. But we will have millions of dollars in Olympics debt, thrown onto the taxpayers, just like everything else is in this city.
December 4th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
If only there were some large powerful body looking to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on something, large heavy manufacturing companies with an oversupply of factories, and people with no jobs in search of work, maybe we could do something about the fact that the CTA disproportionately serves yuppies like me at the expense of poor people who would use it if they could!
December 4th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
25 cents an hour in “downtown” Chicago? This is NOT true at all in downtown Chicago. The cheapest you’ll find in an area that is considered downtown here in Chicago is at least $1 an hour, most places are $2 or $3. Outlying neighborhoods with commercial districts (and ample free neighborhood street parking) are $25 an hour.
Sure, it’s not expensive, but most local news organizations say the price will rise to $5 or 6 an hour. And meters currently stop at 9 PM in downtown, 6 PM in most outlying neighborhoods and do not collect at all on Sundays or holidays. The new meter owner will run meters 24/7, disallowing anyone from parking in a metered spot overnight or after hours. This will impact a lot of people — especially people who visit and stay overnight at a friend’s (girlfriend’s) place who lives on metered streets. Maybe it’ll encourage people to take public transportation, but in many places here, it’s simply not convenient, and the CTA is nowhere near what the Metro is. When I say inconvenient, I don’t mean a 25-minute train ride — often times, and for certain neighborhoods, it’s a bus ride, a train ride and another bus ride.
Yglesias, you and the original posts you cite have no clue what you’re talking about in this city and what this will do to people. In a city like New York or DC, this wouldn’t be such a hassle, but not here.
And Daley is a green mayor — liking to spread the people’s green to “minority-owned” businesses who happen to be owned by white guys. Or, like another posted indicated, giving this lease to a firm advised by his relative.
December 4th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Poor people don’t need to drive downtown and park. They can take public transportation like anybody else – Chicago has a great rail and bus network.
It’s not like everybody parking on the street is poor or can only afford $0.25/hr. They’re just the people that happen to be there when a wildly underpriced parking space opens up.
December 4th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Have you ever lived in Chicago? It’s actually extraordinarily spread out.
Parking in many neighborhoods is free and the population density just isn’t there to support a public transportation network that would really get people around 14 hours a day.
If you don’t believe me look at the data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Population_density
I love public transportation, but there’s something a little irksome about someone from NYC (which has 5 times the density of Chicago) talking up the virtue of public transportation for low density places.
December 5th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Chicago’s public transit is every bit as good as New York’s, provided you live in the sort of neighborhood that someone reading this blog is likely to live in.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:00 am
The cumulative discussion here makes no sense. The posting is about downtown parking, and the naysayers lament the poor quality of neighborhood-to-neighborhood public transportation. So what? If you’re telling me that Chicagoans can’t get downtown on public transportation that’s relevant, but the fact that they can’t go from spoke to spoke is irrelevant.
The poor-city-people-with-cars straw man also needs a rest. It was used to fight congestion pricing in Manhattan and now it’s being used here. It’s not real.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:30 am
“Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, is absolutey on the side of the angels when it comes to green initiatives…”
You should stop reading at that point. We don’t even have a recycling program in this city so Mayor Daley might be on the side of something but it’s probably not angels.
Second, this is nothing but the next step in the mayor’s campaign to privatize public services. He did it with the “Chicago Skyway”, he did it with (formerly city-owned) parking lots downtown. He’s doing it with the parking meters and soon he’ll do it with the 2nd largest airport in Chicago.
Basically what he’s doing is farming out various monopolies to private interests who then jack up the prices for rich and poor alike. No doubt, he’d sell off Lincoln Park if he could. The one-time cash he gets for these sales floats his boat while he obligates the city for decades and centuries.
In any case, the environmental aspect is perhaps the most trivial consideration.
December 5th, 2008 at 7:30 am
As someone who was once able to park at a broken meter for an entire week right off Lake Shore Drive (on Delaware about a half a block in), I am unable to comment on Matt’s post.
Other than to note that parking meters are one of the few instances where using the dollar coin makes sense. When the meters are working, that is.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:24 am
Rich in PA, ignoring the transportation needs of poor people who have the misfortune to live in those “spokes” is itself a surefire way to kill support for congestion pricing. It’s even sillier in Chicago, where a lot of the city’s new growth is HAPPENING in those spokes. Being able to get from point A to point B — even if point B is not in downtown — is a pretty fundamental task of a transportation system.
The point is that — for all sorts of bad reasons — the automobile is our current mode of transportation. Moving away from that would be a good thing. But just simply raising the price for everything with NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE is not a smart way to do that (in Chicago that includes, but is not limited to, hairtrigger red light cams; tollway speed monitors; parking violation cameras on garbage trucks; ever-more finely grained residential parking restrictions; sneakily-worded “snow day” parking restrictions). Moreover, raising prices in this particular way — NOT for better transportation, but just towards correcting an enormous city deficit created by a mismanaged city budget — actually undermines attempts to argue for a transition to a non-automobile system.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
All this and no mention of the fact that they just announced across the board fare hikes on all buses and trains? I remember when they increased sales taxes (again) to avoid that. I guess we get it anyway.
And this post is off by a factor of between 4 and 12: downtown meter rates are $.25 for 5-15 minutes depending on the location, not an hour, and the rate hike is going to immediately double that $1/hour to $2, and raise the $3/hour spots to $3.50, both of which will be doubled again by 2013 and then indexed to inflation.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:52 am
A few observations:
1. the claim that this will be a tax on the poor, as Al suggests, is laughable. Don’t poor Chicagoans ride the CTA?
2. the CTA has plans to expand service into poor neighbors, contrary to what naysayers have said. The red line expansion project is having public hearings soon. Also, see the plans for the circle line and gold line.
3. strange how something like raising the price on parking meters can bring such a varied discussion out in the comments. Also, should any be surprised that Matt is wrong on something? Did everyone sleep through the last 2 weeks of automaker bailout riffage?
December 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am
The problem is that MY is assuming that his readers are familiar with basic economic ideas. Apparently they aren’t.
1) Under correct pricing, shortages are impossible. Even if there was only one parking space in the city of Chicago, a rising price would reduce quantity demanded until only one person was interested in paying the going rate. Supply would equal demand. No shortage.
2) Charging the correct price for government property is optimal for everyone (not just the rich). Hypothetically, if person x is willing to pay only 75c/hr for a spot, while person y is willing to pay $3/hr , the best solution is to give the space to person y and pass 76c/hr-px (where px = whatever we think would be appropriate to charge x) of the proceeds to person x (x is now happier than she would have been with the spot, as her willingness to pay of 75c/hr implies that, for her, 76c/hr-px is worth more than the parking spot at price px).
In practice it’s impossible to determine who precisely would be parking in the spot in the absence of y, but the funds will benefit every citizen in lower taxes or higher services and so the same sort of reasoning applies. Another way of looking at it is to say that the poor would benefit more from the gov’t passing cash from parking proceeds to them than by occasionally getting access to cheap parking spots. After all, they could spend the money on expensive parking spots if that truly is their priority.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Shorter Matt:
If we just let the market set the price of street parking, then parking spaces will become magically abundant! There won’t be any shortages! If poor people are disadvantaged by this, that’s okay, because their claims aren’t favored by the market, and therefore must by definition be less socially valuable.
If we applied the same logic to education or health care, it would be recognized as glibertarian nonsense…
In this case, the quantity of street parking is (more or less) fixed. Therefore it’s not a free market, and normal free market economics doesn’t apply. It’s not automatically the case the market pricing will be the most socially beneficial.
If the quantity of a resource is fixed, it’s nonsensical to talk about surpluses or shortages, since the quantity supplied is exactly the same in all cases. The important question is how that resource is rationed.
It seems to me that the normal urban situation where garage parking goes for the market price and street parking goes for a below market price makes a lot of sense. That way the people who put a high value on their time and convenience can pay the market price for garage parking, and the supply of garage parking stays responsive to market demand. Meanwhile, people who are less willing/able to pay can give up some time and convenience in return for a lower price by parking on the street. The supply of economically viable parking is maximized, and both classes of people end up better off.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Don’t follow leaders
watch the parking meters
Oh and, by the way, Bill Ayers might have known more than me about Obama 10 years ago but, by now, it doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Rich in PA, the reason is that Matt’s initial posting is completely divorced from the reality of what this parking privatization and price increase is about.
December 5th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Benny,
It would be helpful if you mentioned how long those plans for the circle/gold/grey lines have been in existence, and how many other community meetings the CTA has held for projects that stand no chance of getting funded anytime soon.
If the revenue from privatizing meters were to go towards any of these projects, it would be a different story. But it’s not.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Actually, with a Chicago resident heading to the Oval Office and an Olympic bid in the works, the possibility of adding a circle or gold line plus a red line extension is sort of possible to imagine. No, seriously.
Right now the core CTA infrastructure is 100 years old and in disrepair. They are in the process of fixing it. However, it is pretty delapitated. I’ve seen overpasses held together with wooden boards and metal wires keeping load bearing pilings together. Scary. There needs to be more time and money spent on fixing this. It would be nice if that extra meter money went towards preventing system collapse.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Sure, sure, and New York is going to get the Second Avenue line.
Obviously the whole system needs a pretty thorough overhaul in addition to new lines. In the meantime trams along at least a few arterial streets and running CTA trains on the Metra tracks (not as daft as it sounds, and would be cheaper than building out new El tracks to get to Hyde Park/Kenwood, which is not insignificantly Olympicsland) would be good places to start.
December 5th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Hey, don’t mock it, ground was already broke:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway#Construction_status
December 5th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
> 2) Charging the correct price for government property
> is optimal for everyone (not just the rich).
> Hypothetically, if person x is willing to pay only 75c/hr
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! ECON101 Alert! Assumes that (1) utility is always and only measured in money (2) there is no social concept of fairness which overrides ability to pay (3) those with more time and less money should by nature always be at a disadvantage over those with less time and more money.
All fallacies. Try again.
Cranky
December 6th, 2008 at 1:08 am
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
Ummm… You’re wrong.
1) Utility pretty much always can be expressed in terms of money (though the best such measures, like money metric utility and compensating variation, are largely unobservable). The utility derived from consuming any good, service, or experience can be (theoretically) expressed as how much money you would need to be given to be indifferent to giving up that good, service, or experience.
2)There obviously is a social concept of fairness. Which is why I pointed out that those worst off would actually benefit more by receiving proceeds generated from market priced parking than by getting occasional access to cheap parking.
3) Rather than just referring you to a micro 101 textbook (BTW, does “! ECON101 Alert!” imply that my reasoning is “econ 101″ish and hence unsophisticated, or that it’s just plain bad economics and I ought to attend econ 101?),I’ll try another tack .
Imagine that there was a smoothly functioning market for parking spaces. If you have a space, people will come along and make offers for it until you get one big enough that you value it more than the space you must give up. Ultimately, all the valuable urban spaces will be possessed by rich folks, yes, but this isn’t necessarily unfair. It just means that the opportunity costs of premium parking spaces are higher for poor people than rich people.
That is, if we gifted such a space to someone of middling income, they would sell it off right away and spend the proceeds on new cabinets, medical bills, car repairs, and sending their kids to college (precisely as they would do if we granted them a zonda or a private jet). The point is that both they, and the rich person who bought the space, would be better off for the transaction.
To summarize: Poor people would rather have the money than the parking space!
December 6th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Crap. I backslashed my close tag. Sorry.
December 6th, 2008 at 8:11 am
You also just repeated your original arguments using slightly different words, complete with the same fallacies. I am very familiar with the arguments of standard Economics; I just find them much weaker than their advocates believe and often based on fundamental fallacies (in many situations real humans’ preferences are not transitive yet they cannot be fooled by a “money pump” trap – howzat?) and lacking any concept of social structure and how it affects behaviour.
Cranky
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