Unfortunately, Felix, you have based your current post on you last post, which was based on Barbara Kiviat’s spectacularly false blog post. She has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. Parking meter rates in Chicago have been increased repeatedly over the last decade. In 2002, meters in the Loop, River North and Streeterville were raised to $3 from $1 (in some areas, $0.25). And there were zero political repercussions.

In fact, if you look at Mayoral and Aldermanic elections for the last, oh, 100 years, you’ll find that it’s nearly impossible to lose re-election in Chicago, no matter how spectacularly corrupt and mismanaged the government in which you serve.

This lease was yet another terrible idea in a long line of terrible ideas (leasing the Skyway, leasing the city-owned parking garages) which only serves to reinforce the shocking level of fiscal irresponsibility in Chicago government. Running through the list of leaseable municipal properties, after Midway and O’Hare, there’s not much left. With what do we pay our bills then?

Stall size is not an independent variable but a matter of policy; a city can decide to make one side of the street for compacts and the other side for sub-compacts, with larger cars having to pay for TWO spaces. (As just one example.) A city can increase/decrease size of “no parking to corner” or through “load zones.” etc etc Then there is matter of whether spaces are metered for 15 minutes, 30 minutes an hour etc etc. Lots of room for adjustment. A city can thus change the number of parking spaces up or down — unless it is prohibited by contract.

On-street parking can be an important tool of urban design.

Does Chicago’s contract with Morgan Stanley give them the right to make such adjustments over a 75 year period. (4 generations!) I hope so.

The point about ‘adding meters’ is equally irrelevant. New parking spaces will not magically appear downtown.

This is all to one side of the question whether the new, higher rate is reasonable. I happen to think it is; indeed it might be in the public interest for it to be even higher.

According to the City’s own data, there were nearly 23,000 of the total 36,000 meters in Chicago at twenty-five cents per hour. The Loop went from three dollars to three-fifty per hour and the biggest hit was the commercial and upscale areas north of the loop where the meters went from one dollar to two dollars and hour.

Eli:

The City can add as many meters as it wants with the option of either including them in the lease for additional money or keep them off the lease for themselves with LAZ turning over 85% of gross revenues and purchasing/operating the pay boxes for the other 15%.

How exactly does this tie the City’s hands?

While minor city planning purposes might be inadvertently served by the policies of LAZ, overall city planners now have their hands tied because the city no longer has control over whether and where to install or remove meters. In my neighborhood, new street parking is being added with no meters, not because it makes sense, but because the city is afraid to make any changes to the number and location of meters because no one understands the repercussions with regard to the contract with LAZ.

Not true: 25 cents/hour was the lowest rate for parking in the city, used primarily in low-congestion neighborhoods. Many areas, such as the Loop and Gold Coast, already had much higher meter rates before this deal went through.

It’s hard to figure out what is really going on, the value of the asset as-is and whether the City of Chicago got fair value? Other experts quotes said that it did not. I am not sure if one can tell from the facts of the article.

But I am dubious of a deal which violates the basic rule of capitalism: “Don’t spend the capital on current expenses.” The City appears to have used the sale proceeds of a capital asset so as to maintain current spending. That seems very short-sighted. Without any reference to the City of Chicago in particular, but do you trust the govt to spend the current value of a 75 year cash flow in a wise manner?

I am especially curious about this statement in the article:
‘ “The people own the asset to be used today for this generation of people and not for 2050,” Mr. Daley said soon after the Council’s parking meter vote last December. “Our responsibility is to help the generation right now.” ‘

Shouldn’t we be using existing assets and resources with an eye to future generations as well?

Except for about 70 of the 75 years, they’re going to be wishing they still had that meter income.