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Once you have built a residential neighbourhood, parking on the streets is a sunk cost. Cities need money for the police, to collect garbage, etc. So there is n
by phicoh 9y ago
Once you have built a residential neighbourhood, parking on the streets is a sunk cost. Cities need money for the police, to collect garbage, etc. So there is no point in coming up with convoluted schemes to charge people for services that the city provides. Keep tax simple and it costs less to collect it.
Of course, you always run into people with mistaken believes in economic incentives, such as charging per kilo of garbage. By and large those cause more problems then they solve. The best option to make people miserable is to let a private company collect parking fees on behalf of the local government. Then you can be sure that a lot of that money will be wasted on expensive officies, salaries for management, etc.
If there is an actual shortage of parking space, and replacing parking space with bike lanes, etc, may cause such a shortage, then charging for parking makes sense.
If most people living in a residential area are convinced they need a car, then charging for parking is just going to make people unhappy and is likely reducing the value of property in that area.
- URSpider94 9y agoYou've got it exactly backwards. There IS a shortage of parking in big cities. You can't make more streets. Collecting a pile of money in property taxes doesn't improve the situation. The point here is to use money as a means to allocate a scarce resource, and to make car drivers pay the fair cost of operating their car. This will re-balance the incentive structure to push people to walk, use public transit, bike, use delivery services, etc. Covering the cost in property tax doesn't allocate the cost to people who drive.
- CalRobert 9y ago"charging per kilo of garbage" But this works really well!!! I live in an area where instead of paying x per month for garbage collection, I pay about €3.50 per bag for a particular kind of bag that I can leave at the curb and have picked up. This way I am incentivized to produce less waste (also, recycling is a little bit cheaper) . https://keywaste.ie/domestic/domestic-waste-services/ https://keywaste.ie/domestic/domestic-waste-services/ Similarly, there is no free street parking. We have some street parking, but it's still too cheap because it's almost always full (about €3 per hour but only during enforcement hours). However! There is a private garage around the corner where I can park for €22 per day if I care to. If I don't care to, I am wealthier as a result. In the end, so are my neighbours, because none of us is paying for parking we don't need.