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Comment by bin_bash | Hacker News Reader

99% Invisible did a podcast recently where they talked about a very similar issue: the privatization of parking meters in Chicago.

Parking meters have a similar problem. The purpose is for drivers to pay their fair share to use some real estate in a city, however the city and elected officials in charge have a vested interest to keep prices low. Nobody wants to be the mayor known for raising parking rates.

Privatization makes some sense in this case since a private company can actually make the meters charge closer to what parking should cost. However, it ended up being a pretty bad deal for Chicago in the end.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/paved-paradise/

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Sounds kind of like Ticketmaster. "Oh, the rates went up, that's not our fault, it's this private company." "Oh, so you're getting all of the extra money then?" "Not so much, well, the guy who set up the deal got a big personal payday, but we are getting only a tiny sliver of the ongoing extra revenue."

sort of, yeah, Ticketmaster sort of sells "accountability as a service" so fans don't get mad at the artists.

I'm a centrist, but things like this push me further to the right personally. Governments can't charge what they ought to for parking/water and the people ultimately suffer the consequences.

Historically conservative governments have been more interested in making sure the water rates don't go up for corporations than pushing for conservation.

Careful with the left-right thinking here. Can you be sure the upfuckery in this case was due to the leanings of the politicians, that the other party would have done it any differently, and most importantly, the right wing thinking would not cause other side effects (I.e., you lean to right to avoid this kind of garbage, but end up effectively supporting Trump and his flavour of garbage)?

Changing water price on demand is not easy, but I can see dynamic pricing on parking meters ranging from free suring periods of very low usage to a few dollars a hour during high usage.

The infrastructure for pricing electricity on demand already exists, at least where I live. And that is rolled out to all private residences. Why couldn't that be done with water?

Parking rates simply needed to be higher, not dynamic.

Not saying dynamic pricing is not useful though.

>Parking rates simply needed to be higher

I assume at some level that becomes effectively a tax on businesses though as some shoppers stay away on average (albeit making parking easier for others) while the government collects more revenue. (That said, in a lot of places, there probably isn't enough on-street metered parking to meet demand at any reasonable price.)

Parking meters also serve the function of limiting how long a vehicle uses a spot. It's possible to enforce time limits without charging but it's probably mostly harder--and now you pay for enforcement with no offsetting revenue.

Why not just give every voter his share of the money?

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