I've been sitting back on this, but now I have to enter the debate... A fully floating tariff for parking meters that is entirely based on reducing congestion may be "efficient", but it is a false efficiency. People want to have a general idea when they get in their car to go somewhere as to how much it will cost to park. Refusing to provide this information to customers is not efficient. It's true that with a preannounced price schedule, you cannot completely eliminate congestion, but the goal should not be to eliminate congestion but to achieve the optimal level of congestion. Occasional congestion as a result of unforeseen circumstances is no big deal; it is regular, predictable congestion that we should be trying to eliminate. (This goes for toll roads, too.)
I think some of the more interesting possibilities with privatized parking spaces would be: 1) The possibility of local business to validate (i.e., provide discounts for) the parking of customers who park on their street. 2) A potential reduction in NIMBY-ism. When I was living in San Antonio, Texas, they were in the process of designing the Alamodome. There was a big outcry among residents near where that building was going to be located that the stadium was not building enough parking spaces. I met a guy involved in the project who said, "Ideally, we shouldn't build ANY parking because then people would automatically look for somewhere else to park instead of circling around an already full parking lot." The residents didn't like the idea of their neighborhoods being regularly invaded by large numbers of basketball fans (some of whom would likely be inebriated). Well, if the neighborhoods owned the parking meters and could charge, say $20/hour whenever the Spurs played, they might be a little less upset about all this. Respectfully, James Haney
