5 ms·

San Francisco bans parking space apps

36 points by Varcht 12y ago

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Rich jerks in China bribe public parking attendants for exclusive places to park their black Audis on the street. These apps at least distribute the bribes more evenly but nonetheless they are still scummy.
Nursie 12y ago
Good. Monetising antisocial behaviour is not to be encouraged.
derwiki 12y ago
"creates a predatory private market for public parking spaces that San Franciscans will not tolerate" Right, because I've never driven around Nob Hill for an hour trying to find parking, only to have to give up and pay $25 for a garage. The response from the city makes more sense if you've never actually had to do street parking in the city. When I'm at my wit's end, driving around the same streets continuously, I'd gladly have paid $7 for a spot. Have the time you don't even find a spot, you find someone leaving and take the spot immediately.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- untog 12y ago
  What about people who can't pay $7? That's what public services need to think about.
  - jerf 12y ago
    How much does a parking meter cost in San Francisco normally? (Honest question, since I don't live anywhere near there.) Frankly, if private prices for parking spaces really did start to soar, that would be an Enormous Clue for the city, though I fully trust them to bitch about the market long before they actually listen to it. (And by "listen" to it, I do not mean "mindlessly obey it"... I mean, listen to it. It would be trying to tell you something. Perhaps something you already know, but with fresh volume and urgency. But, of course, far better to just crucify the market, then live in a world of myth and mystery where things Just Happen and The Rich are mysteriously behind every bush and every lamppost keeping down The Good People via entirely mysterious and inscrutable magic mechanisms that can never be studied or understood by Good People lest they become Tainted and Unclean....)
    - marcuskaz 12y ago
      Parking varies greatly throughout the city. If you are downtown, it is really difficult to find a spot at all, so garages are usually the main option. Garage runs around $2 for 20 minutes, but then rate declines over more time with typically a $20 cap. If you do find a street spot, its probably metered which now has adjustable rates depending on location and time. A meter will run about $1 for 15 minutes, but no upper cap and most of time limits. If you get out of downtown, there is street parking in most neighborhoods for free, but typically with 2-hour limits, permit zones or weird street cleaning hours which if you leave it there you will get towed. The app will probably benefit the neighborhoods the most, since a free spot with no street cleaning the next day is a gold mine.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    Other than the money going to private companies rather than the city, how is it any different from a parking meter? In my city, there are no parking spots that are walking distance from downtown that do not cost money to use.
- danielweber 12y ago
  It's easy to see this as a foolish reaction of "there is a market? But markets are unfair because money, so let's stop it!" by the city of San Fran. In fact, it would take remarkably little to make me believe San Fran was that foolish. However, these apps also create incentives for people to not give up their spots until someone pays. It's an incomplete market, where someone sits on a shared resource until paid to move. The reality is that SF should be auctioning off these spots on its own. Let the market decide what the price of parking is, and pay the supplier.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    > However, these apps also create incentives for people to not give up their spots until someone pays. It's an incomplete market, where someone sits on a shared resource until paid to move. This analysis is totally on point and I'm shocked someone downvoted you.
  - bkmartin 12y ago
    Why "should" SF be auctioning off these spots? To maximize revenue? Is that why public services exist? Are they doing a larger disservice to the people of SF by NOT auctioning them off, thus raising the price to park, over having a lower price solution to $25 parking garages? Maybe SF should build a couple of public parking garages themselves if they, as a public service, wish to continue to offer more affordable public parking. The residents of the city need affordable parking. Unless, their goal is to get less people to drive in the city and take public transit. There are so many factors at play here. So many agendas and concerns. So I repeat my question... for what reasons "should" SF auction off the spots? What are its ramifications? I have no skin in the game, I'm just an east coaster. These issues are hardly ever so cut and dry as to whether a market exists or not.
    - derwiki 12y ago
      When I had my car in the city, I took public transit every chance I could because I didn't dare lose my parking spot. I only used the car for out of town trips. Then I realized how ridiculous it was to own a car that I was stressed out to use. I switched to Zipcar and never looked back (in fact, my local Zipcar garage is closer than how far away I normally had to park).
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Well, duh ! They have an app that auctions the public parking space you are currently in - and you wait in it till the buyer arrives How did anyone expect that would remain ethical or legal? There are many ways technology could improve parking in SF but making private profits off public resources is not it.
- naturalethic 12y ago
  Nature finds a way. The free market is the little green shoots growing up between the cracks of the grey statist utopian paved earth. Technology is allowing innovators to outpace the entitled dullards that inhabit the halls of political privilege. They'll shut this down, with all you fine citizens celebrating, but the innovators will route around it again.
  - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
    People making money out of someone else's property is what this app and airbnb do. That's not a clever hack or capitalism finding a way - that's stealing and hoping no one notices. Regulation at its core is a vital part of a free market (and by the way the only free part we really care about is freedom to set a price) We regulate murder, kidnap, extortion and parking bye-laws. We do that so we can all move forward in a society packed full of other selfish Great Apes with weapons. It works - we are living proof. It can always be improved, but almost always a market failure in the western world is down to some greedy bastard somewhere breaking the rules to obtain an advantage and not getting shutdown fast enough.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      airbnb makes money off private property and I cannot possibly see how renting your own house to someone would be called stealing. This app makes money of public property, and that is where the difference is - it's as if you were auctioning off your place in a homeless shelter, if you want to stick to the AirBnB reference.
      - 12y ago
TallGuyShort 12y ago
I agree with Mr. Herrera, even as a libertarian. Apps like Uber and Airbnb are fundamentally different from this. You could make an argument that those apps should be regulated consistently with other business in the same market, but at the end of the day they are dealing with private property. This app takes property that is already paid for and maintained by all tax payers and holds it hostage (their metaphor is very apt). Paying for the spot gives you the right to park there - it does not give you the right to determine who comes in next, and especially not to make money off that decision.
- jtc331 12y ago
  It's unlikely you're making [net] money if you're paying to get in and getting payed when you leave.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > It's unlikely you're making [net] money if you're paying to get in and getting payed when you leave. Getting payed when you leave requires being willing to spend extra time when you are done -- and depends on how willing you are to do that. People with reasons for being in the spot beyond arbitrage may have other needs that make that less viable.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
I don't know what to think. Devilishly clever. Instant new market. But so detrimental if it catches on... People who live paycheck-to-paycheck wouldn't be able to afford this. If it becomes very popular, those without disposable income may be unfairly abused by the system. Till now, finding a spot has been random lottery. Pay-for-privilege will leave struggling families out in the cold (perhaps literally). Yet to punish a company so harshly before the phenomenon has proven to be a problem in practice seems draconian. The gap between theory and reality is large. Something that's harmful in theory can sometimes prove itself advantageous in unexpected ways. And what if the company wasn't based in California? Would there be any recourse for California to exert regulatory pressure over a company based in another state? Pg's quote "if you outlaw the future, it will just happen elsewhere" seems relevant. Maybe it's a matter of time until this app catches on in other large cities. Nobody likes spending ~30 minutes searching for a parking spot. But it's difficult to shake the feeling that the whole concept is, well, douchey. I dislike that word, but it seems quite applicable here. Sitting in a parking space for longer than you need it in order to personally profit is pretty much the definition of a dick move. Yet should that argument alone be sufficient reason to outlaw the entire market? I don't know.
- Nursie 12y ago
  Seeking rent from public property is a a problem in itself.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    How is it a problem that the public entity responsible for the property charges rent to individual users? EDIT: Or is the problem you are referring to what the app is doing? I read it as that the app wasn't the problem, but that the underlying idea of paid parking which it sits on top of is wrong, but I realize that it might also be read the other way.
  - jtc331 12y ago
    You pay to get in and pay to get out. Doesn't really seem like seeking [net] rent as much as it is efficiently allocating available resources.
dzhiurgis 12y ago
If SF can devise a system that notifies drivers of a free parking spot for less than it currently costs - go ahead and implement it. But I have admit that I doubt there is a cheaper way. And city probably has more important problems to solve.
- danielweber 12y ago
  A decent transportation infrastructure -- whether it's cars (with associated parking) or trains or buses or bikes or footpaths -- is an essential function of local government.
minimax 12y ago
The problem with this business is not that it forces people to pay high prices for high value parking spaces, rather it's that it incentivizes people to camp out in high value spaces, and that the revenue accrues to the campers and not to the city. If this app is popular at all, it's probably an indication that the city isn't charging enough for parking.
- cabalamat 12y ago
  > and that the revenue accrues to the campers and not the city Then the city should build their own version and get the money that it feels it is entitled to.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    I really don't understand this mindset. Parking spaces are a public resource. The city sets tariffs at a level it feels reasonable. Why should this public resource be priced at the highest rate the market will bear? Why should everything in the world basically only be available to those who can pay the top possible price for something? Why do you want to live in that world?
    - danielweber 12y ago
      There is a market-clearing price. Call it $N. That's the level at which people willing to pay $N can always get a parking spot. For a smaller value of $N, someone wants to get a parking spot by paying $N can't. (That price might even be $0 if you have more supply than demand. Some economists will talk about "The High Price Of Free Parking," and there's something to that, but if the city decides to make the market-clearing price $0, then they should do it by always having enough supply available.) If you decide to distribute the limited resource in a fashion besides money, such as a lottery, you have an inefficient system. Instead of paying money, people have to drive in circles, or queue, or wait to find out the results of a lottery. No one benefits by this. If you are trying to help the poor, just give them more money, and they will decide on their own how valuable parking is to them. For the record, I fully support the city deciding that these other people don't get to extract the city's rents. The city should stop people from occupying a public space merely because they want to get paid to move on. It's the city's resource to sell. (And maybe the market clearing price becomes $0 once you kick out the people who are making a problem just to be paid to stop making it -- which is the definition of a racket.)
cabalamat 12y ago
AIUI, this is people paying for, and parking their car in a city-owned car parking space, and then giving up that space to someone who's willing to pay more money for it. This is simply arbitrage, and it's legal when Wall St fatcats do it, it should be legal for everyone. If the city objects, they should charge the market-clearing price for parking. If that leads to a problem where only rich people can park, then California should build as much low-cost housing as it takes so that everyone can afford a house without paying an arm and a leg.
- viraptor 12y ago
  I see it as something very close to protection racket. This app creates an incentive to take the space for longer than necessary and get paid for freeing it up. Maybe as an add-on you won't get your car scratched for an extra payment?
Nursie 12y ago
Hey, I should do this with tables at popular restaurants during peak hours too. That's not being an asshole, it's letting the market decide!
- viraptor 12y ago
  You can book a table at restaurants. Maybe booking a parking would be a thing to look at instead. Being paid for leaving the place actually creates market for people who would bend the rules for profit. For example get a low-mpg/electric car that you drive around, take any space, then immediately resell it. Even worse, if you get together with others, you probably could create enough artificial resource scarcity to lift the prices to the level that makes doing this all day long profitable.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    Not all restaurants. Maybe that lunch place that's real popular, you know the one, where seating's unreserved. I could really draw out my meal until the right person comes along and pays me to move on. But yes, I agree, this whole thing creates incentives that add up to a bad situation for an allegedly public resource.
davidw 12y ago
Not directly related, but here's Godwin (yes, that one) posting "Hitler tries to find an apartment in SF": https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/480572531749826561 https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/480572531749826561 - it's pretty funny.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
apostate 12y ago
Perhaps regulating a cap is better than banning the practice outright. If the max price is equal to the minutes left on the meter * fare per minute, the seller will never get back more than they put in. They will just be selling back the unused minutes, which can be useful if someone puts a few hours on the meter because they don't know how long they will need it. This would prevent scalping, and if parking is considered a public good, it will bring the minutes paid for / minutes used ratio closer to 1, which should be the goal. I understand that it's probably not the goal of the app creators, but it is a reasonable compromise. Of course, this type of efficiency means more social benefit and lower revenues for the city, so that's not likely to happen.
- netcan 12y ago
  regulating = endorsing. Regulating badly is usually worse than not regulating at all.
  - apostate 12y ago
    I tend to agree with that sentiment. I suppose I was just thinking about the city I live in. Here, the meter prints out a receipt that the driver leaves on the dash of the car. People often will give the receipt to someone else when they are leaving their spot. Of course this practice is illegal, but I don't think it should be if the spot was paid for. Of course, it would be douchey if people started selling these tickets for high prices (that would be seeking rent from a public good), but I would have no problem buying a ticket off of a guy who wants to get his remaining three bucks back. But I suppose you are right, there is no "good way" to get something between price gouging anarchy and outright banning of the practice.
300bps 12y ago
In this case, you have someone pay a small parking meter fee and then they sit in the public spot waiting for someone to offer them more than their original meter fee. This is very similar to domain name registration. You have someone pay a small registration fee (~$12) to register a domain and then they sit on that domain waiting for someone to pay them substantially more for it. If it is ethical for a domain name market to work this way, why is a parking meter market different?
- jsutton 12y ago
  Because domain names aren't public property.

36 points by Varcht 12y ago

Rich jerks in China bribe public parking attendants for exclusive places to park their black Audis on the street. These apps at least distribute the bribes more evenly but nonetheless they are still scummy.

Nursie 12y ago

Good. Monetising antisocial behaviour is not to be encouraged.

derwiki 12y ago

"creates a predatory private market for public parking spaces that San Franciscans will not tolerate" Right, because I've never driven around Nob Hill for an hour trying to find parking, only to have to give up and pay $25 for a garage. The response from the city makes more sense if you've never actually had to do street parking in the city. When I'm at my wit's end, driving around the same streets continuously, I'd gladly have paid $7 for a spot. Have the time you don't even find a spot, you find someone leaving and take the spot immediately.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
untog 12y ago
What about people who can't pay $7? That's what public services need to think about.
- jerf 12y ago
  How much does a parking meter cost in San Francisco normally? (Honest question, since I don't live anywhere near there.) Frankly, if private prices for parking spaces really did start to soar, that would be an Enormous Clue for the city, though I fully trust them to bitch about the market long before they actually listen to it. (And by "listen" to it, I do not mean "mindlessly obey it"... I mean, listen to it. It would be trying to tell you something. Perhaps something you already know, but with fresh volume and urgency. But, of course, far better to just crucify the market, then live in a world of myth and mystery where things Just Happen and The Rich are mysteriously behind every bush and every lamppost keeping down The Good People via entirely mysterious and inscrutable magic mechanisms that can never be studied or understood by Good People lest they become Tainted and Unclean....)
  - marcuskaz 12y ago
    Parking varies greatly throughout the city. If you are downtown, it is really difficult to find a spot at all, so garages are usually the main option. Garage runs around $2 for 20 minutes, but then rate declines over more time with typically a $20 cap. If you do find a street spot, its probably metered which now has adjustable rates depending on location and time. A meter will run about $1 for 15 minutes, but no upper cap and most of time limits. If you get out of downtown, there is street parking in most neighborhoods for free, but typically with 2-hour limits, permit zones or weird street cleaning hours which if you leave it there you will get towed. The app will probably benefit the neighborhoods the most, since a free spot with no street cleaning the next day is a gold mine.
- freehunter 12y ago
  Other than the money going to private companies rather than the city, how is it any different from a parking meter? In my city, there are no parking spots that are walking distance from downtown that do not cost money to use.
danielweber 12y ago
It's easy to see this as a foolish reaction of "there is a market? But markets are unfair because money, so let's stop it!" by the city of San Fran. In fact, it would take remarkably little to make me believe San Fran was that foolish. However, these apps also create incentives for people to not give up their spots until someone pays. It's an incomplete market, where someone sits on a shared resource until paid to move. The reality is that SF should be auctioning off these spots on its own. Let the market decide what the price of parking is, and pay the supplier.
- rayiner 12y ago
  > However, these apps also create incentives for people to not give up their spots until someone pays. It's an incomplete market, where someone sits on a shared resource until paid to move. This analysis is totally on point and I'm shocked someone downvoted you.
- bkmartin 12y ago
  Why "should" SF be auctioning off these spots? To maximize revenue? Is that why public services exist? Are they doing a larger disservice to the people of SF by NOT auctioning them off, thus raising the price to park, over having a lower price solution to $25 parking garages? Maybe SF should build a couple of public parking garages themselves if they, as a public service, wish to continue to offer more affordable public parking. The residents of the city need affordable parking. Unless, their goal is to get less people to drive in the city and take public transit. There are so many factors at play here. So many agendas and concerns. So I repeat my question... for what reasons "should" SF auction off the spots? What are its ramifications? I have no skin in the game, I'm just an east coaster. These issues are hardly ever so cut and dry as to whether a market exists or not.
  - derwiki 12y ago
    When I had my car in the city, I took public transit every chance I could because I didn't dare lose my parking spot. I only used the car for out of town trips. Then I realized how ridiculous it was to own a car that I was stressed out to use. I switched to Zipcar and never looked back (in fact, my local Zipcar garage is closer than how far away I normally had to park).

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

Well, duh ! They have an app that auctions the public parking space you are currently in - and you wait in it till the buyer arrives How did anyone expect that would remain ethical or legal? There are many ways technology could improve parking in SF but making private profits off public resources is not it.

naturalethic 12y ago
Nature finds a way. The free market is the little green shoots growing up between the cracks of the grey statist utopian paved earth. Technology is allowing innovators to outpace the entitled dullards that inhabit the halls of political privilege. They'll shut this down, with all you fine citizens celebrating, but the innovators will route around it again.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  People making money out of someone else's property is what this app and airbnb do. That's not a clever hack or capitalism finding a way - that's stealing and hoping no one notices. Regulation at its core is a vital part of a free market (and by the way the only free part we really care about is freedom to set a price) We regulate murder, kidnap, extortion and parking bye-laws. We do that so we can all move forward in a society packed full of other selfish Great Apes with weapons. It works - we are living proof. It can always be improved, but almost always a market failure in the western world is down to some greedy bastard somewhere breaking the rules to obtain an advantage and not getting shutdown fast enough.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    airbnb makes money off private property and I cannot possibly see how renting your own house to someone would be called stealing. This app makes money of public property, and that is where the difference is - it's as if you were auctioning off your place in a homeless shelter, if you want to stick to the AirBnB reference.
    - 12y ago

TallGuyShort 12y ago

I agree with Mr. Herrera, even as a libertarian. Apps like Uber and Airbnb are fundamentally different from this. You could make an argument that those apps should be regulated consistently with other business in the same market, but at the end of the day they are dealing with private property. This app takes property that is already paid for and maintained by all tax payers and holds it hostage (their metaphor is very apt). Paying for the spot gives you the right to park there - it does not give you the right to determine who comes in next, and especially not to make money off that decision.

jtc331 12y ago
It's unlikely you're making [net] money if you're paying to get in and getting payed when you leave.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > It's unlikely you're making [net] money if you're paying to get in and getting payed when you leave. Getting payed when you leave requires being willing to spend extra time when you are done -- and depends on how willing you are to do that. People with reasons for being in the spot beyond arbitrage may have other needs that make that less viable.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

I don't know what to think. Devilishly clever. Instant new market. But so detrimental if it catches on... People who live paycheck-to-paycheck wouldn't be able to afford this. If it becomes very popular, those without disposable income may be unfairly abused by the system. Till now, finding a spot has been random lottery. Pay-for-privilege will leave struggling families out in the cold (perhaps literally). Yet to punish a company so harshly before the phenomenon has proven to be a problem in practice seems draconian. The gap between theory and reality is large. Something that's harmful in theory can sometimes prove itself advantageous in unexpected ways. And what if the company wasn't based in California? Would there be any recourse for California to exert regulatory pressure over a company based in another state? Pg's quote "if you outlaw the future, it will just happen elsewhere" seems relevant. Maybe it's a matter of time until this app catches on in other large cities. Nobody likes spending ~30 minutes searching for a parking spot. But it's difficult to shake the feeling that the whole concept is, well, douchey. I dislike that word, but it seems quite applicable here. Sitting in a parking space for longer than you need it in order to personally profit is pretty much the definition of a dick move. Yet should that argument alone be sufficient reason to outlaw the entire market? I don't know.

Nursie 12y ago
Seeking rent from public property is a a problem in itself.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  How is it a problem that the public entity responsible for the property charges rent to individual users? EDIT: Or is the problem you are referring to what the app is doing? I read it as that the app wasn't the problem, but that the underlying idea of paid parking which it sits on top of is wrong, but I realize that it might also be read the other way.
- jtc331 12y ago
  You pay to get in and pay to get out. Doesn't really seem like seeking [net] rent as much as it is efficiently allocating available resources.

dzhiurgis 12y ago

If SF can devise a system that notifies drivers of a free parking spot for less than it currently costs - go ahead and implement it. But I have admit that I doubt there is a cheaper way. And city probably has more important problems to solve.

danielweber 12y ago
A decent transportation infrastructure -- whether it's cars (with associated parking) or trains or buses or bikes or footpaths -- is an essential function of local government.

minimax 12y ago

The problem with this business is not that it forces people to pay high prices for high value parking spaces, rather it's that it incentivizes people to camp out in high value spaces, and that the revenue accrues to the campers and not to the city. If this app is popular at all, it's probably an indication that the city isn't charging enough for parking.

cabalamat 12y ago
> and that the revenue accrues to the campers and not the city Then the city should build their own version and get the money that it feels it is entitled to.
- Nursie 12y ago
  I really don't understand this mindset. Parking spaces are a public resource. The city sets tariffs at a level it feels reasonable. Why should this public resource be priced at the highest rate the market will bear? Why should everything in the world basically only be available to those who can pay the top possible price for something? Why do you want to live in that world?
  - danielweber 12y ago
    There is a market-clearing price. Call it $N. That's the level at which people willing to pay $N can always get a parking spot. For a smaller value of $N, someone wants to get a parking spot by paying $N can't. (That price might even be $0 if you have more supply than demand. Some economists will talk about "The High Price Of Free Parking," and there's something to that, but if the city decides to make the market-clearing price $0, then they should do it by always having enough supply available.) If you decide to distribute the limited resource in a fashion besides money, such as a lottery, you have an inefficient system. Instead of paying money, people have to drive in circles, or queue, or wait to find out the results of a lottery. No one benefits by this. If you are trying to help the poor, just give them more money, and they will decide on their own how valuable parking is to them. For the record, I fully support the city deciding that these other people don't get to extract the city's rents. The city should stop people from occupying a public space merely because they want to get paid to move on. It's the city's resource to sell. (And maybe the market clearing price becomes $0 once you kick out the people who are making a problem just to be paid to stop making it -- which is the definition of a racket.)

cabalamat 12y ago

AIUI, this is people paying for, and parking their car in a city-owned car parking space, and then giving up that space to someone who's willing to pay more money for it. This is simply arbitrage, and it's legal when Wall St fatcats do it, it should be legal for everyone. If the city objects, they should charge the market-clearing price for parking. If that leads to a problem where only rich people can park, then California should build as much low-cost housing as it takes so that everyone can afford a house without paying an arm and a leg.

viraptor 12y ago
I see it as something very close to protection racket. This app creates an incentive to take the space for longer than necessary and get paid for freeing it up. Maybe as an add-on you won't get your car scratched for an extra payment?

Nursie 12y ago

Hey, I should do this with tables at popular restaurants during peak hours too. That's not being an asshole, it's letting the market decide!

viraptor 12y ago
You can book a table at restaurants. Maybe booking a parking would be a thing to look at instead. Being paid for leaving the place actually creates market for people who would bend the rules for profit. For example get a low-mpg/electric car that you drive around, take any space, then immediately resell it. Even worse, if you get together with others, you probably could create enough artificial resource scarcity to lift the prices to the level that makes doing this all day long profitable.
- Nursie 12y ago
  Not all restaurants. Maybe that lunch place that's real popular, you know the one, where seating's unreserved. I could really draw out my meal until the right person comes along and pays me to move on. But yes, I agree, this whole thing creates incentives that add up to a bad situation for an allegedly public resource.

davidw 12y ago

Not directly related, but here's Godwin (yes, that one) posting "Hitler tries to find an apartment in SF": https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/480572531749826561 https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/480572531749826561 - it's pretty funny.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

apostate 12y ago

Perhaps regulating a cap is better than banning the practice outright. If the max price is equal to the minutes left on the meter * fare per minute, the seller will never get back more than they put in. They will just be selling back the unused minutes, which can be useful if someone puts a few hours on the meter because they don't know how long they will need it. This would prevent scalping, and if parking is considered a public good, it will bring the minutes paid for / minutes used ratio closer to 1, which should be the goal. I understand that it's probably not the goal of the app creators, but it is a reasonable compromise. Of course, this type of efficiency means more social benefit and lower revenues for the city, so that's not likely to happen.

netcan 12y ago
regulating = endorsing. Regulating badly is usually worse than not regulating at all.
- apostate 12y ago
  I tend to agree with that sentiment. I suppose I was just thinking about the city I live in. Here, the meter prints out a receipt that the driver leaves on the dash of the car. People often will give the receipt to someone else when they are leaving their spot. Of course this practice is illegal, but I don't think it should be if the spot was paid for. Of course, it would be douchey if people started selling these tickets for high prices (that would be seeking rent from a public good), but I would have no problem buying a ticket off of a guy who wants to get his remaining three bucks back. But I suppose you are right, there is no "good way" to get something between price gouging anarchy and outright banning of the practice.

300bps 12y ago

In this case, you have someone pay a small parking meter fee and then they sit in the public spot waiting for someone to offer them more than their original meter fee. This is very similar to domain name registration. You have someone pay a small registration fee (~$12) to register a domain and then they sit on that domain waiting for someone to pay them substantially more for it. If it is ethical for a domain name market to work this way, why is a parking meter market different?

jsutton 12y ago
Because domain names aren't public property.