I just love it when folks get what they want and then it turns and bites them right on the rear. Here’s to a shopping area in Brooklyn. They got their streets refurbished, their parking meters removed, and their business in the dumper. Read about it here.
OK, they didn’t ask for the meters to be removed. The city did that as part of the refurbishment. I guess they probably will be replaced, some day. In the mean time, the merchants are screaming bloody murder. It seems that you can’t really enforce parking limits without meters. You know, a charge.
Their business is down, most likely because when the meters were removed, all their employees started parking on the street in front of their shops, taking the spaces used by customers. The customers, not finding space to park, space, by the way they had been and were more than willing to pay for, went to places where parking was plentiful, and probably costly.
These stories simply underscore the need for charging market rates for on street parking to maintain the resource and to make sure that the people that want to park have a place to park. Simple? Yep.
JVH
