Sigh — Read this article in the Miami Herald about Miami Beach preparing to allow Hybrid owners to have discounted parking and reserved spaces. Then read the outrage from folks who live in the area. The biggest argument — there are many vehicles that get better mileage than hybrids — many smaller cars like Minis, Civics, etc get over 35 miles per gallon, and many hybrids, particularly SUV’s get much less mileage.
The folks are hollering "Discrimination" and "where is the ALCU when you need them" and "most green house gases come from politicians." I love that last one.
Once again, it would be so easy to solve their problem — raise the parking rates, use the money to build more spaces if they need them and get on with their lives. All this other nonsense solves nothing and simply causes recrimination.
Miami Beach will have a hundred reason why I am wrong, but they all relate to the city not having the political will to really solve a parking problem. I’m making up the following, but it would be great if someone would set me straight:
They have 100,000 cars coming into the area on weekends and what 17,000 city owned spaces. Well, duh. Private industry would solve that problem in a New York minute if they didn’t have to complete with very low priced 17,000 city owned spaces. If you raised the rate on on street parking to be higher, much higher, than off street parking, it would make commercial sense to build more parking, or for people to set up shuttle services, or complete the local rapid transit into the area, or walk.
As long as private industry has to compete with the local government, they will simply go somewhere else.
JVH
One Response
I came across and interesting idea. Future news. Here is my attempt:
China shocks the world by revealing the first completely pollution free coal fired power plants are supplying energy to the Olympics. Every gram of carbon the plants produced is trapped and recycled.
In further news it is announced that you may save the environment by getting drunk. Distilled spirits manufacturers finally realized that they could trap and recycle CO2 produced by sour mash fermentation by adding just a little extra plumbing.
And finally, one of the largest sources of waste paper was eliminated as phone books the world over went on an “opt in” system. After it was realized that many people who communicate via cell phone and internet never even open a phone book, it was easy to cut the number of phone books produced in the world by 90%.