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If anyone in city government is smart Chicago is going to have no real choice but to go against this trend because of its utterly atrocious parking meter deal 1

If anyone in city government is smart Chicago is going to have no real choice but to go against this trend because of its utterly atrocious parking meter deal 10+ years ago - or they're going to have to take that glut of spaces and make them free parking to try to get out of the deal. Basically the city committed to keeping a fixed number of street parking spaces for 75 years in exchange for a pittance. If spaces are closed for construction or eliminated completely, the city has to pay the private company for those spaces as if they were being used. Want bike lanes? Don't forget to account for the paying for all those eliminated parking spaces. Pedestrian only areas? See above. Ride sharing cutting into driving? Guess they'll have plenty of empty space to pick up and drop off in - unless there's a way for the parking meter company to charge for that couple of minutes in a parking space. But it's not all bad - the city only has to put up with it until 2083. http://www.urbanophile.com/2018/05/17/chicago-parking-meter-lease-slow-motion-train-wreck-only-has-65-more-years-to-go/ http://www.urbanophile.com/2018/05/17/chicago-parking-meter-...

gok 8y ago
The alternative was bankruptcy. And as the market for street parking vaporizes over the next couple decades, this may end up being a great deal.
- fiter 8y ago
  This will still be a sour deal. What a waste of urban space to just leave empty parking spots due to the fees for repurposing them.
  - gok 8y ago
    Presumably as the market for parking goes away the owners of it will find a more profitable use for the space.
    - fencepost 8y ago
      The ones in buildings and lots, sure, or they'll just set prices lower than street parking. The whole thing is still going to hurt the city by making it not worth going into. I know of "destination" specialty stores that have closed because adding an extra $4+ of parking to the cost of going there to shop made it not worthwhile. I personally was part of a group that used to meet for dinner at different restaurants every week, but Chicago restaurants got dropped from choices because an extra $8-10 on a meal gets you a much nicer (or less expensive) meal in the suburbs with free parking.
    - fiter 8y ago
      The owner of the spots are the city but the owner of the parking meters are this corporation. The city will owe fees if they decide to change usage. So this is a sour deal because now they'll either have to leave them as open spots (waste) or pay this company for lost revenues if they change them (waste).
- fencepost 8y ago
  How will it be a great deal? For 65 more years Chicago will be on the hook for paving and otherwise not using two lanes worth of road on a huge number of roads. If self driving cars become incredible over the next 20 years, the city goes to all robot cabs and no private vehicles, etc. they will still have to keep those parking spaces or pay the parking vendor for them. For this year the city will be paying $20+ million and it's not getting even the ~24 million it would previously have gotten, so roughly a net -45 million for 2018 alone - and even not counting the money paid by the city the leasing company will have made back its entire purchase price by 2020, leaving 60+ years of pure profit. Chicago got taken so hard that it's now the canonical example of how not to do this kind of thing.
cozzyd 8y ago
This is a tricky issue. The correct thing to do would have been to increase parking rates to something sane, which the private company did, but would have been politically difficult for the city. At the rates the city was charging before, and assuming there was no political way to raise them, it's possible it may have been a rational choice. Ideally it would have been a shorter timescale though...
- gok 8y ago
  It also had the benefit of moving the meter maids off the city payroll...
- fencepost 8y ago
  If it was a rational choice it wouldn't have been rammed through the way it was. The way it was handled gives an almost undeniable air of utterly filthy bought and paid for fix is in. The Chicago Reader has a nice timeline of a bunch of the privatization that was going on at the time: https://m.chicagoreader.com/chicago/features-cover-april-9-2009/Content?oid=1098561 https://m.chicagoreader.com/chicago/features-cover-april-9-2... Bids are opened 12/1. Aldermen get invited on 12/2 to a briefing that day, where they get limited information and no details. 12/3 a finance committee meeting is held to get an ordinance to accept the bid into process - what they'll be voting on is provided only during this meeting. The finance committee passes it with no significant scrutiny. The full council vote is scheduled for 12/4, and requests to see the city's numbers and financial analysis of the deal are rejected. When you look back at the deal, to me and an awful lot of other people it looks like one of two things: either most of the people involved on the city side were utterly incompetent, or someone(s) were nicely taken care of in some way. Edit; autocorrect

gok 8y ago

The alternative was bankruptcy. And as the market for street parking vaporizes over the next couple decades, this may end up being a great deal.

fiter 8y ago
This will still be a sour deal. What a waste of urban space to just leave empty parking spots due to the fees for repurposing them.
- gok 8y ago
  Presumably as the market for parking goes away the owners of it will find a more profitable use for the space.
  - fencepost 8y ago
    The ones in buildings and lots, sure, or they'll just set prices lower than street parking. The whole thing is still going to hurt the city by making it not worth going into. I know of "destination" specialty stores that have closed because adding an extra $4+ of parking to the cost of going there to shop made it not worthwhile. I personally was part of a group that used to meet for dinner at different restaurants every week, but Chicago restaurants got dropped from choices because an extra $8-10 on a meal gets you a much nicer (or less expensive) meal in the suburbs with free parking.
  - fiter 8y ago
    The owner of the spots are the city but the owner of the parking meters are this corporation. The city will owe fees if they decide to change usage. So this is a sour deal because now they'll either have to leave them as open spots (waste) or pay this company for lost revenues if they change them (waste).
fencepost 8y ago
How will it be a great deal? For 65 more years Chicago will be on the hook for paving and otherwise not using two lanes worth of road on a huge number of roads. If self driving cars become incredible over the next 20 years, the city goes to all robot cabs and no private vehicles, etc. they will still have to keep those parking spaces or pay the parking vendor for them. For this year the city will be paying $20+ million and it's not getting even the ~24 million it would previously have gotten, so roughly a net -45 million for 2018 alone - and even not counting the money paid by the city the leasing company will have made back its entire purchase price by 2020, leaving 60+ years of pure profit. Chicago got taken so hard that it's now the canonical example of how not to do this kind of thing.

cozzyd 8y ago

This is a tricky issue. The correct thing to do would have been to increase parking rates to something sane, which the private company did, but would have been politically difficult for the city. At the rates the city was charging before, and assuming there was no political way to raise them, it's possible it may have been a rational choice. Ideally it would have been a shorter timescale though...

gok 8y ago
It also had the benefit of moving the meter maids off the city payroll...
fencepost 8y ago
If it was a rational choice it wouldn't have been rammed through the way it was. The way it was handled gives an almost undeniable air of utterly filthy bought and paid for fix is in. The Chicago Reader has a nice timeline of a bunch of the privatization that was going on at the time: https://m.chicagoreader.com/chicago/features-cover-april-9-2009/Content?oid=1098561 https://m.chicagoreader.com/chicago/features-cover-april-9-2... Bids are opened 12/1. Aldermen get invited on 12/2 to a briefing that day, where they get limited information and no details. 12/3 a finance committee meeting is held to get an ordinance to accept the bid into process - what they'll be voting on is provided only during this meeting. The finance committee passes it with no significant scrutiny. The full council vote is scheduled for 12/4, and requests to see the city's numbers and financial analysis of the deal are rejected. When you look back at the deal, to me and an awful lot of other people it looks like one of two things: either most of the people involved on the city side were utterly incompetent, or someone(s) were nicely taken care of in some way. Edit; autocorrect