Today Jeff Lee wrote in The Vancouver Sun newspaper that Vancouver City is eyeing high-tech pilot projects in San Francisco and Los Angeles where on-street parking rates are varied and change according to demand. Vancouver's Director of Transportation, Jerry Dobrovolny is said to have admitted that Vancouver has the highest peak on-street parking rates in North America but he calls the policies "progressive".
Question: Do you think that nosebleed parking rates create more places for people to park? I don't. Two things happen: 1. People stop going downtown and they go somewhere else to conduct their business, and / or 2) They go downtown anyway and make do. If the space is too expensive, which some may argue it is at this point, some drivers simply drive around without parking and exacerbate the situation. This is neither solving congestion nor saving energy and curbing pollution. It's the Vancouver parking equivalent of solving the landfill problem by shipping garbage elsewhere.
In the most extreme situation (like NYC and London), people hire drivers who simply keep driving the car around in circles until a meeting is finished... and then on to the next meeting to do the same. I know this because I've done it.
The $60m generated in fees and fines is telling about the real motivation. It's mean, uncivilized... and in the case where people are living on a shoe string or simply down on their luck, it's just downright cruel.
I think there is something very immoral about relying on fines (of any kind) as part of a city budget. It's despicable actually.
