Dear list, Why spend so much time discussing the 'optimal' parking meter strategy - let the market figure it out!
What we need to do is to (re)privatize inner city streets (I don't know what the story is in the US, but here in Denmark, streets were actually once owned by the people who lived in them - but they have since been reduced to 'token' owners with no real property rights). Of course some major streets would never be privatized (no reason why not – but they just wouldn’t) - but these are also the streets where there is normally not many parking spaces. The vast majority of parking spaces would thus be under private ownership - and then I feel confident that the market would find the optimal parking solution. Private parking corporations would make agreements with residents as to when who would have the 'right' to the street and how to treat residents' cars at those periods of the day / week when the parking corporation had the right. Many parking corporations would probably offer 'packages' where they - while they were checking meters anyway - would also look after people houses and call the police if they saw anything suspicious... vis-à-vis one another the private parking corporations would compete to find the most efficient way of securing market clearance for parking spaces: some would maybe have a fixed price, others would vary the price - time will tell. The 'public' role in all this would be reduced to managing the few parking spaces on 'public' streets (but they could probably work out a contract with one of the private corporations as well) - whatever they choose to do (incl. free parking) they would not be a big enough player to mess up the market. - jacob braestrup
