6 ms·

Re: privatization of public services, I would love to see writing up parking tickets outsourced to private companies. It's trivial to incentivise them to do a g

by badpun 4y ago

Re: privatization of public services, I would love to see writing up parking tickets outsourced to private companies. It's trivial to incentivise them to do a great job (just give them a fraction of money from tickets they write, and fine them for writing frivolous ones), yet no country I've heard of does that. It really shows that the world is completely dominated by car culture at the moment. Politicians are just affraid of having too good parking rules enforcement, as they suspect most of their electorate are drivers and would actually hate it. As a result, we have cities littered with cars parked at places where they cause problem for everyone (it's less of a problem in the US, because many US cities are basically parking lots with buildings in the middle - so there's no need to park illegally).

djbebs 4y ago
No country does it?? Portugal does it, with the associated nefarious effects.
YawningAngel 4y ago
Trust me, you really wouldn't. This incentive structure has existed previously in the UK and it lead to precisely the degenerate outcomes you might imagine. What you want is fewer cars
- AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
  What kind of degenerate outcomes? Just curious. Any good links to read?
  - Peanuts99 4y ago
    I once sat in a phone queue for 3 hours to dispute a charge that I received due to signage that was obstructed by trees. There's no incentive to handle disputes so they effectively don't. There's also hundreds of different companies each with their own rules and systems. Most of the time I'll park 3 or 4 miles out of the city and walk in rather than dealing with crappy parking companies.
    - AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
      What if dispute handling is handled by the city then, while the actual job on the ground is outsourced? You think it's gonna help?
      - jrimbault 4y ago
        > dispute handling is handled by the city then That would be the defintion of "socializing costs" while "privatising revenues".
        AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
        It's more like a government oversight in food industry: you're free to reap the benefits, but if you get too many complaints you'll be shagged by a hefty fine.
        badpun 4y ago
        Not if the private company gets fined for every case where the ticket was frivolous and got overthrown. It's all in my original post BTW.
eesmith 4y ago
> parking tickets outsourced to private companies. Chicago. "Chicago's Parking Meter Deal a Lesson in 'Worst Practices" - https://www.bettergov.org/news/chicagos-parking-meter-deal-a-lesson-in-worst-practices https://www.bettergov.org/news/chicagos-parking-meter-deal-a... ] In 2008, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and the City Council agreed to lease Chicago’s parking meter business for 75 years and in return received $1.15 billion from Chicago Parking Meters LLC, a venture that includes Wall Street investment house Morgan Stanley, Alliance Capital Partners and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. It also mentions: ] Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles are rethinking their parking meter deals because of Chicago’s difficulties, according to Bloomberg Business News. Unlike
- tarakat 4y ago
  > for 75 years A sure sign of corruption. An honest lease would be short, so that it can simply not be renewed if problems arise.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    > Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley... is an approximately equally sure sign of corruption.
- ricree 4y ago
  >Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles are rethinking their parking meter deals This is over ten years old. I wonder what those cities wound up doing.
kedikedi 4y ago
In Finland, at least, this is a thing. Parking enforcement is partially given to private companies but I don't know how it works with the underlying mechanisms (i.e. whether they are getting a fixed sum, or whether they get a fraction of the fines they fine).
defrost 4y ago
Easily the most iconic privately funded organisation associated with parking tickets and enforcement would be the Queensland (Australia) Surfers Paradise Meter Maids : > Unlike other meter maids, who issue parking tickets to motorists when they overstay, Gold Coast meter maids put money into parking meters which might otherwise expire, preventing vehicle owners from incurring a fine. After the introduction of pay-and-display parking meters they took on the task of explaining to motorists how the machines work. Say what now?? > The Surfers Paradise meter maids were first instituted by entrepreneur Bernie Elsey in 1965, through the Surfers Paradise Progress Association, which was opposed to the introduction of parking meters by the Gold Coast City Council. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfers_Paradise_Meter_Maids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfers_Paradise_Meter_Maids
- AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
  Well, paid parking, among other things is a way of managing a scarce resource of public parking spots.
tommica 4y ago
So instead of having an entity to do the ticketing, you propose to have an entity to validate that the ticketing done by the 3rd party is valid? Does not seem to solve anything.
- badpun 4y ago
  Not validate, only handle disputes. The dispuses will be a small minority of all cases, and, as usual, the onus of the proof will fall on the accuser, i.e. private company. So, they either must have a good documentation (photos etc.) proving the infraction, or the ticket gets overthrown and they themselves get fined for wasting everybody's time. I don't think this was really viable in the pre-smartphones era, but now every private parking cop can (and would be required to) take copious photos with a cheap device. This should really minimize any shadiness in the system.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    > The disputes will be a small minority of all cases Assuming the system will work the way you expect it to work, and not fail into more lucrative modes that are trivial to predict.
    - badpun 4y ago
      Name one then.
      - marcosdumay 4y ago
        The company making a lot of false tickets because most people just pay, so they still come up ahead. "I can't think of a flaw, so my plan must be flawless" is a pretty arrogant position and rarely leads to good plans.
olliej 4y ago
Those private businesses are incentivized to make money by ticketing as many people as possible. As long as fighting a ticket is more expensive than paying a ticket there is no incentive for them to do "a great job". Because the model of all of these systems is that the private "efficient" entity gets a %age of the expenses that they inflict on people, but any cost from subsequent lawsuits are borne by the public.
- seti0Cha 4y ago
  There are seemingly obvious ways of countering that, such as included mandatory upper limits on ticket contest rates. Are these not part of the contract? Who enters into contracts with no provision for actually delivering the service at an acceptable level?
  - olliej 4y ago
    People focus on the dollar amounts for contesting tickets, but more likely the problem is time. If you have a minimum wage job you likely don’t have the time flexibility to allow you to go to any kind of “court” to contest a fine. If you have a high paying job, then likely the time costs you more than what you save - especially if the cost of contesting a fine in capped at something “affordable”. Your other question: what is “acceptable service level” measuring for a ticketing service?
    - seti0Cha 4y ago
      That's the case for government run ticketing as well. Even if only a small percent of people contest unfair tickets, you can use that as an indicator of how many unfair tickets are being issued. If it goes up under private ticketing, and assuming you don't change the method for contesting, the odds are good that they are doing something to cause it. Hence you could write a service level agreement that says something like "Percent of issued tickets which are contested shall not vary beyond x% from y (the prior rate). Percent of successfully contested tickets will not vary beyond z%", etc. To come up with an actual service level agreement would require some knowledge of what outcomes are desired and some thought about how those numbers could be gamed, but I don't see why this is not possible. Private companies contract out work all the time and don't seem helpless in their ability to get what they want from it. Why should the government not be able to do this?
rpastuszak 4y ago
This reminds me a bit of (privatised) tax collection in the Ancient Rome. Didn't go that well.
baud147258 4y ago
> yet no country I've heard of does that You might have heard of France, I guess? The city where I live uses (Suresnes, just next to Paris) uses a private company to manage parking tickets in street parking; but I've got no idea how the incentives are structured and how well (or not) it works
- orwin 4y ago
  Right-wing city dweller article on the subject: https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/03/08/01016-20180308ARTFIG00270-stationnement-a-paris-ces-agents-non-assermentes-qui-verbalisent-illegalement.php https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/03/08/01016-20... Left-wing article on the subject: http://www.regards.fr/actu/societe/article/paris-les-voyous-du-prive-gerent-les-pv http://www.regards.fr/actu/societe/article/paris-les-voyous-... Mostly center-right, rural article on the subject: https://www.ouest-france.fr/economie/impots-fiscalite/pv-stationnement/sationnement-pv-automatises-des-boulettes-et-des-bevues-b5f49aee-2135-11ec-8452-a029323887c0 https://www.ouest-france.fr/economie/impots-fiscalite/pv-sta... TFDR (Too French, didn't read): Basically, across all media, including the "Figaro" (notorious right-wing paper who often push for privatization), this isn't going that well.
RajT88 4y ago
The city of Chicago privatized parking tickets, but levies no fines (to my knowledge) on abuse of the system. So abuse in the system is rampant by parking enforcement. Everyone I know who drives in the city has crazy stories of bullshit tickets or tows. Chicago is also the city that got caught shortening yellow light duration after installing traffic cameras which wrote automated tickets.
DaedPsyker 4y ago
That would incentivise behaviour similar to police in the US using fines and civil forfeit to augment their budget. It's a perverse incentive that encourages lying to increase fines, and good luck challenging it.
rsynnott 4y ago
> It's trivial to incentivise them to do a great job (just give them a fraction of money from tickets they write, and fine them for writing frivolous ones) Congratulations; you've essentially re-invented tax farming, as was popular in the Roman Empire. We know from _literally millennia_ of bitter experience that giving private companies a cut of whatever they manage to extract from the general public is a very bad idea. If you pay someone more the more they abuse the rules (these things are virtually impossible to police), then you can't be surprised when they break the rules.

by badpun 4y ago

djbebs 4y ago

No country does it?? Portugal does it, with the associated nefarious effects.

YawningAngel 4y ago

Trust me, you really wouldn't. This incentive structure has existed previously in the UK and it lead to precisely the degenerate outcomes you might imagine. What you want is fewer cars

AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
What kind of degenerate outcomes? Just curious. Any good links to read?
- Peanuts99 4y ago
  I once sat in a phone queue for 3 hours to dispute a charge that I received due to signage that was obstructed by trees. There's no incentive to handle disputes so they effectively don't. There's also hundreds of different companies each with their own rules and systems. Most of the time I'll park 3 or 4 miles out of the city and walk in rather than dealing with crappy parking companies.
  - AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
    What if dispute handling is handled by the city then, while the actual job on the ground is outsourced? You think it's gonna help?
    - jrimbault 4y ago
      > dispute handling is handled by the city then That would be the defintion of "socializing costs" while "privatising revenues".
      - AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
        It's more like a government oversight in food industry: you're free to reap the benefits, but if you get too many complaints you'll be shagged by a hefty fine.
      - badpun 4y ago
        Not if the private company gets fined for every case where the ticket was frivolous and got overthrown. It's all in my original post BTW.

eesmith 4y ago

> parking tickets outsourced to private companies. Chicago. "Chicago's Parking Meter Deal a Lesson in 'Worst Practices" - https://www.bettergov.org/news/chicagos-parking-meter-deal-a-lesson-in-worst-practices https://www.bettergov.org/news/chicagos-parking-meter-deal-a... ] In 2008, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and the City Council agreed to lease Chicago’s parking meter business for 75 years and in return received $1.15 billion from Chicago Parking Meters LLC, a venture that includes Wall Street investment house Morgan Stanley, Alliance Capital Partners and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. It also mentions: ] Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles are rethinking their parking meter deals because of Chicago’s difficulties, according to Bloomberg Business News. Unlike

tarakat 4y ago
> for 75 years A sure sign of corruption. An honest lease would be short, so that it can simply not be renewed if problems arise.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  > Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley... is an approximately equally sure sign of corruption.
ricree 4y ago
>Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Los Angeles are rethinking their parking meter deals This is over ten years old. I wonder what those cities wound up doing.

kedikedi 4y ago

In Finland, at least, this is a thing. Parking enforcement is partially given to private companies but I don't know how it works with the underlying mechanisms (i.e. whether they are getting a fixed sum, or whether they get a fraction of the fines they fine).

defrost 4y ago

Easily the most iconic privately funded organisation associated with parking tickets and enforcement would be the Queensland (Australia) Surfers Paradise Meter Maids : > Unlike other meter maids, who issue parking tickets to motorists when they overstay, Gold Coast meter maids put money into parking meters which might otherwise expire, preventing vehicle owners from incurring a fine. After the introduction of pay-and-display parking meters they took on the task of explaining to motorists how the machines work. Say what now?? > The Surfers Paradise meter maids were first instituted by entrepreneur Bernie Elsey in 1965, through the Surfers Paradise Progress Association, which was opposed to the introduction of parking meters by the Gold Coast City Council. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfers_Paradise_Meter_Maids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surfers_Paradise_Meter_Maids

AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
Well, paid parking, among other things is a way of managing a scarce resource of public parking spots.

tommica 4y ago

So instead of having an entity to do the ticketing, you propose to have an entity to validate that the ticketing done by the 3rd party is valid? Does not seem to solve anything.

badpun 4y ago
Not validate, only handle disputes. The dispuses will be a small minority of all cases, and, as usual, the onus of the proof will fall on the accuser, i.e. private company. So, they either must have a good documentation (photos etc.) proving the infraction, or the ticket gets overthrown and they themselves get fined for wasting everybody's time. I don't think this was really viable in the pre-smartphones era, but now every private parking cop can (and would be required to) take copious photos with a cheap device. This should really minimize any shadiness in the system.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > The disputes will be a small minority of all cases Assuming the system will work the way you expect it to work, and not fail into more lucrative modes that are trivial to predict.
  - badpun 4y ago
    Name one then.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      The company making a lot of false tickets because most people just pay, so they still come up ahead. "I can't think of a flaw, so my plan must be flawless" is a pretty arrogant position and rarely leads to good plans.

olliej 4y ago

Those private businesses are incentivized to make money by ticketing as many people as possible. As long as fighting a ticket is more expensive than paying a ticket there is no incentive for them to do "a great job". Because the model of all of these systems is that the private "efficient" entity gets a %age of the expenses that they inflict on people, but any cost from subsequent lawsuits are borne by the public.

seti0Cha 4y ago
There are seemingly obvious ways of countering that, such as included mandatory upper limits on ticket contest rates. Are these not part of the contract? Who enters into contracts with no provision for actually delivering the service at an acceptable level?
- olliej 4y ago
  People focus on the dollar amounts for contesting tickets, but more likely the problem is time. If you have a minimum wage job you likely don’t have the time flexibility to allow you to go to any kind of “court” to contest a fine. If you have a high paying job, then likely the time costs you more than what you save - especially if the cost of contesting a fine in capped at something “affordable”. Your other question: what is “acceptable service level” measuring for a ticketing service?
  - seti0Cha 4y ago
    That's the case for government run ticketing as well. Even if only a small percent of people contest unfair tickets, you can use that as an indicator of how many unfair tickets are being issued. If it goes up under private ticketing, and assuming you don't change the method for contesting, the odds are good that they are doing something to cause it. Hence you could write a service level agreement that says something like "Percent of issued tickets which are contested shall not vary beyond x% from y (the prior rate). Percent of successfully contested tickets will not vary beyond z%", etc. To come up with an actual service level agreement would require some knowledge of what outcomes are desired and some thought about how those numbers could be gamed, but I don't see why this is not possible. Private companies contract out work all the time and don't seem helpless in their ability to get what they want from it. Why should the government not be able to do this?

rpastuszak 4y ago

This reminds me a bit of (privatised) tax collection in the Ancient Rome. Didn't go that well.

baud147258 4y ago

> yet no country I've heard of does that You might have heard of France, I guess? The city where I live uses (Suresnes, just next to Paris) uses a private company to manage parking tickets in street parking; but I've got no idea how the incentives are structured and how well (or not) it works

orwin 4y ago
Right-wing city dweller article on the subject: https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/03/08/01016-20180308ARTFIG00270-stationnement-a-paris-ces-agents-non-assermentes-qui-verbalisent-illegalement.php https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2018/03/08/01016-20... Left-wing article on the subject: http://www.regards.fr/actu/societe/article/paris-les-voyous-du-prive-gerent-les-pv http://www.regards.fr/actu/societe/article/paris-les-voyous-... Mostly center-right, rural article on the subject: https://www.ouest-france.fr/economie/impots-fiscalite/pv-stationnement/sationnement-pv-automatises-des-boulettes-et-des-bevues-b5f49aee-2135-11ec-8452-a029323887c0 https://www.ouest-france.fr/economie/impots-fiscalite/pv-sta... TFDR (Too French, didn't read): Basically, across all media, including the "Figaro" (notorious right-wing paper who often push for privatization), this isn't going that well.

RajT88 4y ago

The city of Chicago privatized parking tickets, but levies no fines (to my knowledge) on abuse of the system. So abuse in the system is rampant by parking enforcement. Everyone I know who drives in the city has crazy stories of bullshit tickets or tows. Chicago is also the city that got caught shortening yellow light duration after installing traffic cameras which wrote automated tickets.

DaedPsyker 4y ago

That would incentivise behaviour similar to police in the US using fines and civil forfeit to augment their budget. It's a perverse incentive that encourages lying to increase fines, and good luck challenging it.

rsynnott 4y ago

> It's trivial to incentivise them to do a great job (just give them a fraction of money from tickets they write, and fine them for writing frivolous ones) Congratulations; you've essentially re-invented tax farming, as was popular in the Roman Empire. We know from _literally millennia_ of bitter experience that giving private companies a cut of whatever they manage to extract from the general public is a very bad idea. If you pay someone more the more they abuse the rules (these things are virtually impossible to police), then you can't be surprised when they break the rules.