Parking Meters Boxes Installed Where Drivers Never Park

Here's a thing.  I think the parking meter deal sucks.  But having said that, I don' think it's fair to say "hey, here's what Pilsen is like today, and no one parks there," and assuming that's what it'll be like in 10, 20, 50 years.  It's a long game.

I was talking about the sourness of the overall meter deal, of which these boxes are a part of.  Before the new boxes there would have been old meters with cheaper fares that nobody would have cared about either way.  Clearly nobody found that interesting enough to report on until they got replaced with the fancy new, and higher fare boxes.

Yes, but nobody else was talking about that.

Going for silver . . .

I think you are trying to win some private version of the insult
Olympics. The game must be to see how many people can question you
intelligence in a given period of time.

I think once again think you're being angry and rude from the get go.  I didn't even address you in this post (or the other one) and it was just posing a simple question, implying that users should feel free to correct or elaborate.  There's no need for you to be so unbelievably combative.   I would think that they would want to make sure that they would be able to add a certain amount of new meters as they like to boost revenues over the 75 years of the lease.  Whether this stretch is actually the cause of the city, an alderman, or them, I have no idea.

Greed maybe, but this has nothing to do with capitalism because neither LAZ nor the city made any money off of this. Perhaps the
manufacturer of the meters did, but if they were so good at crony
capitalism they should have blocked the LAZ deal to start with.

All the people involved in making the deal go through, the lawyers and *cronies* of Daley made quite a bit of money.  That is "crony capitalism".  It usually happens at the expense of the actual citizens.  BTW, Daley has since taken a position with the law firm that negotiated the deal.  Like I said...

But when he was mayor Daley steered key work Katten's way, most of it on
the city's big privatization efforts. Best known is the $662,760 the
firm received for researching and writing the parking meter lease
agreement, but the city also paid Katten $100,000 for its work on the Skyway privatization, $60,000 to help lease out the downtown parking garages, at least $75,000 for the aborted privatization of Midway airport, and more than $217,000 for the attempted privatization of the city's three garbage and recycling sorting centers, according to city records.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/B...

Alright, I'll leave you alone. Your post was utterly unresponsive to any of the substantive points I made, and included the huge misdirection on the Katten thing. I won't try to hold your feet to the fire. Someone else can do that if they care enough to.

You said the parking meter deal had nothing to do with crony capitalism, and that nobody made money.  Morgan Stanley did, the law firm did, and now Daley has been repaid with a sweet job by the firm now that he's back in the private sector.  It's classic crony capitalism, big business in bed with government.  The revolving door that we see over and over again.  Everyone gets paid, but the citizens get robbed.

See, you're on your way to a bronze medal. What we were talking about was these meters being replaced by these boxes. Everything I said was clearly directed toward that, rather than the entire deal, since that's what we were talking about. That little piece of the transaction would be a failure of any type of capitalism.

You can do it, Navin!

From the article "For some logic defying reason, the city installed these meters along blocks and blocks of vacant lots in 2008"

Probably part of LAZ's terms of the contract, no?

Anyway, that photo of meter sitting among tall weeds is hilarious, or sadly illustrative of the corrupt nature of crony capitalism.

I think you are trying to win some private version of the insult Olympics. The game must be to see how many people can question you intelligence in a given period of time.

"Probably part of LAZ's terms of the contract, no?"
Right. Because LAZ is hoping and praying they have to add infrastructure that will not return any income.

"Anyway, that photo of meter sitting among tall weeds is hilarious, or sadly illustrative of the corrupt nature of crony capitalism."
Greed maybe, but this has nothing to do with capitalism because neither LAZ nor the city made any money off of this. Perhaps the manufacturer of the meters did, but if they were so good at crony capitalism they should have blocked the LAZ deal to start with.

Most likely, someone figured that the Medical District was about to take off with new development and wanted to get in on the front end. Alternatively, maybe they were trying to force people into the parking structures. THAT might be a "crony" aspect, but nothing else you said makes any sense at all.

I think you are trying to win some private version of the insult Olympics. The game must be to see how many people can question you intelligence in a given period of time.

ROFLX

Hey look it's Rev "fatal attraction" Slappy. 

Even though the old meters there were useless and inefficient, I am certain that privatizing them has made them useless more efficiently than the city ever could.  The system works!

People ought to be happy. It puts a little dent in the profits of the parking folks.

That area didn't have any meters until about 5 years ago.  The whole area had meters installed pretty much overnight and have been vacant since.  People would park there and walk to the Medical Center or the UIC classrooms on West Campus, but when the meters went up people stopped parking there altogether (you might as well just park in the UIC structures for the same price).  Now its just streets upon empty streets. Its stupid.

Thank you for the explanation! that is better than my theory that a circus comes to that area once a year and requires streets upon streets of pay meters for parking.

Remember folks:  Private companies will always be cheaper and more efficient....

Since they were required to put boxes in the area because the city had meters there this doesn't speak to their efficiency at all. In fact, the whole thing is kind of a stupid non-story. The story, if there were one, would be why the city originally put the meters in. Oscar (below) seems to have covered the unintended consequence of that pretty well.

He did:  (you might as well just park in the UIC structures for the same price)

They raised the rates after the parking meter deal went through.  And we have no real say in future price increases, other than to not park of course.  That's the good old free market......

Seems to me that the market would dictate that parking fees in that area would be dropped to reflect how undesirable it is to park there.

Anyway, it makes me glad I've finally made the switch to being fully car free.

They will, possibly.  Nothing is stopping CPM from lowering rates.  The city regulates the maximum rate that can be charged, which happens to be what all the meters are currently charging.  If CPM decides at some point down the line to lower prices in certain never-used areas, they're free to.

That being said, it's quite likely that they're just "conditioning" people to accept higher prices.  Over a period of years, they think they will make more money by leaving these expensive-yet-undesirable spaces at the same maximum rate, so that people accept it as an inevitability and just give in.

When I ride the pink line to Pilsen from the North side for work I notice those pay boxes. Why are they there? Who would be parking there? I've never seen a car parked there, only the occasional vehicle from the parking meter people checking in on them. I ask myself on a regular basis what is there, or could have been there, to warrant parking meters. If anyone can explain, I would greatly appreciate it!

My seat of the pants observation is that enforcement is non-existent as well.  I roll the dice more and more outside of the loop when I park.