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Tax on taking up what could be green space.
Except in Chicago, where the meters are privately owned 😅
Having a higher meter rate does create a perverse incentive for the city to provide more on street parking to make more money however…
The Chicago parking situation is nuts. Not only did they sell them for 75 years, and not only did they sell for only a little over a single year of earnings, but they’re also required to reimburse the parking companies for lost revenue (such as from reducing parking spaces or construction). The price of parking has more than doubled since then.
Maybe this can be a lesson to everyone about privatization.
That lesson: bribe govt officials to privatize public goods because you’ll get your money back and then some 😅
Urg, gross
It’s insanely easy and cheap to drive into downtown Portland. I’ll never understand why parochials complain that it’s difficult, I guess they’ve never been to literally any other city. I live in North Portland, it takes me about 10 minutes to drive into downtown, I can always find a curbside spot without having to search, and the ParkingKitty fee for a whole hour is < $3 (And only during business hours, night and weekends are completely free!!!). It would almost cost me more to take the Max train. In a city known for it’s public transit. Make it make sense.
Yep! From Seattle and it’s still easy to find parking here. Every time I go to Portland, I never have an issue.
Fun fact: Portland has an official rap video for their parking payment app, ParkingKitty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Hxewc_64M
As long as they are using that money to subsidise public transport drive a change in behaviour
Then in a while people wonder why the city center is dying. People stop visiting, stores close and get replace by boring-ass chains that can survive on a loss.
At least this is the case in my city.
But yeah fuck cars and all.
According to another comment, this rate hike is needed to patch a budget deficit.
Car centric urban design is too expensive for the stakeholders to pay for it. So sooner or later you’ll either see suffocating fees or decaying infrastructure.
Parking outside city center and then public transit/walking to the city 🥳
This happens in some part of downtown here, mainly the business district. It’s dead during any part of the day other than noon on weekdays. The reason isn’t high fees, it’s just that it’s a boring part of the city center where there’s nothing to do and it’s very very car focused. Not a lot of interesting places can sustain by catering to cars. Every other part that isn’t infested with cars is vibrant with life at any time of day. Raising parking fees, removing parking and removing car trafic has the opposite effect : it makes it so that the city center stops suffocating under cars.
Unfortunately, the idea of the city center being sustained by suburbs with cars is just a myth. It’s mostly strangled by them in most north american cities. It can sustain on it’s own by catering to the population that lives in them or close by. And if there’s not enough population, densify. A focus on active transportation and public transit is the way to go.
Where are these fees being applied?
According to a previous article, the increased revenue is needed to patch up a $40 million deficit in the Portland Transportation Bureau budget. So, that’s going to make people angry, what with the increased fees going to pay for infrastructure and services that they already get, which are invisible in a way, rather than PTB being able to point to something new.
Most of it goes to PBOT, the city transportation bureau. A 60 cent surcharge on each transaction goes to a collection of equipment modernization programs, climate equity initiatives, and payment processing.
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