The City of New Haven, Ct, decided to be kind to its residents and aren’t charging for parking on "Black Friday," the busiest shopping day of the year.
Now, my understanding is that on this day, parking is at a premium and many people won’t be able to find places to park. It would seem to me that INCREASING parking rates on this day would be the thing to do. People would think twice about where they were going and how long they were going to park, thus making more space for others.
My guess is that workers in the Connecticut City will simply come down and fill the convenient spaces thus reducing the availability of parking. Or movie goers will park for the afternoon, when they could have taken a bus, simply because the parking is free. Or shoppers, who normally might have doubled up on their cars will decide, what the heck, no need to carpool, parking is free.
Some people will feel great, a lot of others will be upset because they couldn’t find parking.
But you know, we will never know it. The ones that parked will be interviewed by the local paper and tell stories of great free parking, and the ones that didn’t get the space and drove to the mall on the outskirts of town will never be interviewed.
By the way — do you know the origin of "Black Friday" — its called that because since its the busiest shopping day of the year, its the day many businesses go into the "Black". Profit wise, that is.
JVH
