Chicago is about to lease it's parking meter system to a private company. It's about time the city starts to charge closer to market rates for parking. These increased rates are still a steal by market standards though. Next time you park, look at the nearest garage and compare with your meter rate to see how much the city is subsidizing street parking.

It's disappointing though that there's no mention of using this money to improve our transportation infrastructure. And also no mention of using rates to manage our transportation demand. Here's to hoping we don't waste 75 years of parking revenue on four years of fiscal mismanagement.

I wrote my alderman urging him not to support a deal that doesn't include reinvesting in our transportation system. Here's my message:

Later this month, parking spaces across the country will be transformed into park spaces and public performance exhibits, returning valuable urban real estate to the public realm. The Trust for Public Land is hosting the national Park(ing) Day on Sept. 21. According to their website "National Park(ing) Day is a series of public art projects nationwide to celebrate parks and promote the need for more parks in America's cities." I like to think it's also a great way to promote awareness about transportation and how much we waste in the name of the automobile. Street parking is heavily subsidized by the city, so it's very cheap to "rent" a space yourself to create a temporary park for your own street. Just be sure to pay the meter and follow the time limits! Click the link above to let the TPL know about your parking space project if you are planning one.

Parking policies can have a significant impact on our urban environment, deciding whether your neighborhood looks like Little Paris or Little Schaumburg. The city decides the minimum number of off-street parking spaces required for different kinds of development, from condos to bars, and sets the cost of on-street parking meters. These seemingly innocuous policies also influence developers’ decisions about what to build in your neighborhood, indirectly shaping your blocks.

As concerns about parking shortages have grown, neighborhoods have been complaining that new development is straining the limited parking supply. In response, some neighborhoods are downzoning in an effort to limit the number of new residents (and cars), or requiring that new developments include more than the city minimum requirement of one parking space per unit in exchange for zoning changes.

But we don’t really have parking shortages in the city – the same neighborhoods complaining about parking shortages often have parking garages that sit half-empty. We only have shortages of free parking, which is not something we should be in the business of providing anyway.

Often parking becomes an end in and of itself rather than a means to improve access to homes and businesses. Parking should be part of a larger strategy for access rather than treated as the only means of access.