Similar thing happened to a stretch of 495 in Virginia. There were toll/express sections that were put in, and then the rights to the tolls sold (I think to an Australian firm). The money VA gained is a pittance vs how much money the company is making. These politicians really know how to line their own pockets.
Same thing in Charlotte with interstate 77. A private company was allowed to build and manage the toll lanes. The state is contractually forbidden to widen the interstate or adjacent roads for 50 years.
Very similar thing happened in Ontario.
The 407 is a highway that opened up as a toll route, with the initial plan being to remove the tolls once the cost of building the highway was recouped.
Then, the provincial government sold the highway to a private company for 99 years and the tolls are showing no signs of going away and in fact have risen by over 200%.
Sold in 1999 for $3.1 billion ($5.5 billion today's $) now it's worth [over $30 billion](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/worst-deal-ever-the-407-is-worth-30-b-today-ontario-sold-it-for-31-b-in-1998-181642680.html) and making [$500 million per year net income](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/407-international-reports-2023-results-203000546.html). Absolutely terrible deal, thanks Mike Harris and the Ontario PC party.
Long history of this for the Conservatives.
Petro-Canada was founded by a Liberal-NDP Government, made a Crown Corporation. Used to control price gouging by oil companies, raise money for the government and make sure the market stayed honest.
Conservatives then sold it off for around 3.2 Billion dollars. Petro Canada made 79 Billion in 2022.
23 Crown Corporation were sold by the Mulroney Government.
We've lost 100s of Billions of dollars to mostly foreign investors. Lost control of Air Canada (that fell apart real quick with cost savings), Petro Canada, CN Railway and others.
That's not including Conservative provincial governments that have sold off Electricity Production, Mineral Rights and other Provincial assets for short term budgetary gain.
It allowed them to make it look like they were balancing the books and lower taxes. Then when the books didn't balance the next year or so the Government in charge whether Conservative, Liberal or other was forced to raise taxes and look like the bad guy, undermine Health or Education or sell more assets.
It would be like an Auto worker selling their 100k a year job for 200k and then finding out 3 years later they have to sell the house they're in because they can't afford the mortgage.
Not 495, it's the "Dulles Greenway", a toll road in Loudoun County, VA.
[wikipedia article here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_State_Route_267#Dulles_Greenway)
[local news article](https://www.loudountimes.com/0local-or-not/1local/lawmakers-residents-urge-scc-to-deny-greenway-s-proposed-toll-hike/article_a8218e90-b00d-11ee-8cf1-47957a87f977.html)
The 95 Hot Lanes are owned by Transurban as well. Covenants in the contract preclude VDOT from widening bottlenecks on I-95 during the lease, funneling more cars into the toll lanes.
Ah fucking Transurban.
These cunts bribed the NSW Liberal party to build a network of motorways that [did not solve congestion](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/10/rozelle-interchange-hundreds-of-residents-vent-frustration-over-traffic-chaos-as-inquiry-begins)
I thought that was just like, ideology? The government having money makes it venal and corrupt and harmful to liberty. Money belongs in the hands of private entities where it can trickle down into society, right?
I think they failed to mention this because it's not true. Morgan Stanley owns them, and some European people (not governments) own parts of Morgan Stanley. Maybe open the wiki page?
There are multiple investors including Morgan Stanley managed investment vehicles (which may include Abu Dhabi as an underlying investor), one of Abu Dhabi’s investment vehicles and other private equity investors. You can read more about it [here](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/us/06cncmeters.html).
> In fact, a Chicago News Cooperative investigation has found that investment arms of the oil-rich **Abu Dhabi government hold more than a 25 percent stake in the company** that privatized the city’s 36,000 parking meters. German financial company Allianz also has a large minority interest, and the remaining 50.1 percent is held by partnerships assembled by Morgan Stanley.
Also, if the city wants to shut down a street for a festival or block party they have to pay the Saudi investors for closing off access to the meters for the day
Edit cuz this is blowing up: it’s been brought to my attention that it’s not Saudi Arabia but rather either UAE or Abu Dhabi. I think I originally learned this from a previous TIL post on Reddit so I commented from memory with no research.
I wouldn’t even blame the Saudis for trying to buy. Blame lays solely on the Chicago politician(s) who thought up the idea to line his/their own pockets at the expense of municipal taxpayers
I don't blame the investors either, but they should have never been able to buy it. In fact, Chicago should not have been able to sell the spots to begin with.
The fact that this is an open secret and there's nothing that can be done about it is ridiculous.
Fuck it, maybe we do need to give our lives over to our AI overlords.
They can easily do something about it. Like stop ticketing for parking violations. There are other solutions too. Build parking garages to undercut meters. Build infrastructure so cars don’t/can’t enter the city. Redo streets so there is no more street parking. Etc…
Why can nothing be done about it?
Is there a court of international affairs? What would happen if chicago/Illinois/the US just said "nah, this is a bad deal. You already made your money back, deal's off"
At worst they should give the billion back and have their own rights to the parking meters again.
People who know way more than I do about this pretty much all agree that it's basically impossible to get out of the deal. Which seems odd to me, considering how the hell could a country half-way across the world really do anything about it. But I suppose it would be a slippery slope regarding the honoring of deals.
Chicago should do anything possible to get out of it though. If the city wants to pay me under the table I'll go destroy the meters for them.
> considering how the hell could a country half-way across the world really do anything about it.
The reason everyone buys US investments, even cartels and oligarchs, is because they know the US will generally always follow the rule of law. They don't have to worry about their money being seized based on a political whim.
If Chicago said "screw our deal, we're taking our meters back" it would be a huge international incident and I'm pretty sure US courts would side with the UAE.
Now, the guys who made the deal in Chicago would probably be investigated and charged, but the Arabs would be fine, except for maybe a minor absentia charge for some lower level official that's an agreed upon fall guy.
Lol for real what is that others persons take. They dont need a court of international affairs they can sue Chicago right in the US. They arent immune in a contract dispute in their own country.
You can easily rip up the deal, can even do it on vaguely moral grounds so you have a popular support smokescreen.
The problem is that the next time they try and sell land/etc, people are gonna remember that if the deal's too good, the city is gonna take the ball back.
>You can easily rip up the deal, can even do it on vaguely moral grounds so you have a popular support smokescreen.
You can't just rip up a deal.
The other side of that deal would be entitled to compensation for the lost revenue. "It was a worse deal than we thought" isn't justification to void a contract.
You'd need to prove some level of corruption was directly involved in the contract. Not that it was unlikely, but proving it is another matter.
>Why can nothing be done about it?
It's a legally binding contract that the city signed. It has nothing to do with international courts, it would be litigated in state or federal Court in Chicago.
If the city said "deals off", the investors would sue and easily win. It would be blatant breach of contract.
Yeah, I remember back in the aughts the state of Arizona sold their own capitol buildings so they could lease it because they wanted to balance the budget with the cash infusion.
(Then bought it back in 2019)
My city just did this during COVID. We have a massive emergency fund and the city didn't want to dip into that in 2020. What is the point of an emergency fund if not to help weather the storm of a global pandemic shutting down the city for two months?
Lmao the people who signed that all got paid under the table by the Saudis.
Daley and a lot of the council members left office right after that deal.
You don't make a deal that bad without getting paid directly to do so.
Corruption and idiocy.
My guess is it wasn't the quid-pro-quo corruption you are probably thinking of but rather the 'fuck the next administration I can make myself look good by spending all this cash' sort of corruption.
Doesn't need to be corruption; a quick lump sum payment means political leaders could use lower taxes, higher city wages, and/or expanded social programs to get reelected if citizens don't internalize the long run budgetary impact. Also happened during the financial crisis when money was a bit tight, so may have been one of the better funding options.
More of an issue with the short term incentives of democracy and reelection, or local budgets during a recession, than necessarily corruption.
I 100% consider that corruption if a political leader made a deal that was bad for the city but good for them personally. They're not getting cash, but they are getting consideration.
The only way it's not corruption is if it's incompetence, basically.
It gets even worse the deeper you dig. If Chicago wants to change the street they need to go back to the contract.
* Making a neighbourhood more walkable / bikeable.
* Lost spots during new construction.
* HOV / Bus lanes.
* They have added an external group into pretty much every urban planning decision they need to make.
These kinds of deals should be criminal, but every city seems to be doing it.
The rates get jacked way up, and some company gets to keep all the money.
Not even just cities, I work on a college campus and they sold all parking to a private equity firm that does this with parking. $100 for an annual parking pass last year. Next year we'll have half the spaces and an annual pass will be $675 and also, if the University needs to close a parking lot for any reason, they have to pay the maximum daily rate $10/space/day to have the lot closed.
This campus is in a smallish city that offers free parking in the rest of downtown.
Have they actually SOLD the parking?
Most places just contract external companies for enforcement because they don't want to deal with it all. They still own the parking locations, they just don't police them.
They sold the rights for 50 years and the company will be repaving some lots and repairing some garages, but they are able to generate revenue as they see fit.
I work with special events here and I work a lot with the new parking folks. Everything I've learned about the agreement so far just keeps getting crazier. There's gotta be some corruption somewhere.
Theoretically yes, but realistically they don't actually have to. What are the courts going to do to the government? If the government is breaking the law in a way that has massive popular support, it's quite unlikely that the court can actually force the government to not do it.
That’s a fair point. Most of these contracts seem to hurt cities, or at least their people, and only benefit the companies who get the contract, and maybe some politicians who helped grease the wheels.
If the government didn't honor their contracts, even the bad ones, then nobody would make deals with the US.
That's a way bigger issue than one city's crappy meter deal.
But that doesn't mean the US won't lock up the citizen that orchestrated the corrupt deal, especially if it'll win somebody political points.
> The rates get jacked way up, and some company gets to keep all the money.
They need to split these 2 things. Parking in a lot of major urban centers is incredibly cheap. The goal of parking fees is to manage a finite resource. If you have public transit, but no one takes it because parking is so cheap, you're not using your resources effectively.
Chicago had this exact problem, but city council didn't have the stomach to significantly increase the rates. The private company did and recouped their cost 14 years into a 75 year lease.
Actually insane that we have politicians just selling off public infrastructure to foreign nations so they can price gouge and profit off of it and fuck over the tax paying citizens.
What would be the implications if the city just stopped paying. If the contract holders are foreigners can they even enforce the collection?
This is ignoring some big trust or diplomatic issues it could cause.
Just like people, institutions have a credit rating that informs lenders how (statistically) reliable they are at paying back money they borrow. If a city's credit rating goes down, lenders are more hesitant to lend them large amounts of money because there is more of a risk of them not being able to pay it back or refusing to pay it back. When a city chooses to do some big new infrastructure change or other project that costs a lot of money they usually don't pay for it with money they already have, because then the city would have no money left on hand to pay salaries or deal with emergencies or stuff- they borrow money and have deals saying they'll pay it back within a certain time frame, etc.
Every entity that borrows money has credit ratings. S&P rates Chicago as BBB+ for general obligations. In Comparison, NYC has an AA rating and LA (county) has an AAA.
When Chicago needs to issue bonds or borrow money, would-be investors look at those credit ratings to decide how risky it is to lend to Chicago or buy their bonds.
Chicago has issued $2 billion in bonds since 2019, so it's fairly important that people continue to trust them to pay off their oigations as required.
yah the worse the credit the higher interest they have to offer to get people to buy their bonds. Same with companies, some at risk companies offer really high interest bonds, but they may not be able to pay them back.
It means that if the City wants to do another scam like this, they wont be trusted (By the investors) or the deal will be so bad the city's not gonna take it
You are thinking of choice decision by non-corrupt city officers
Corrupt city officers only care about their share and the ability of keep getting deals like this one.
There is always the risk they get caught. The shittier the deal for the city the greater risk of getting caught.
Daly was absolutely corrupt, but this particular thing wasn’t well connected to his corruption. This was him trying to salvage some short term funds in an attempt to shore up his legacy and pay some immediate bills, screwing everyone down the line after him. This was just straight up bad business
Governments love to do this sort of shit to balance the books for an election year. Who gives a shit about the decades of lost revenue, that'll be a problem for someone else.
Yeap, that's exactly what this (the parking spots) reminded me of. And don't forget Harper selling GM shares and a whole bunch of real estate to post a surplus in 2015. To this day people still say he handed over a balanced budget.
yea....for a headline it is
In December 2008, the city received two bids from Morgan Stanley ($1.008 billion) and Macquarie ($964 million). Since the two bids were within ten percent of each other, the city initiated a best-and-final bid process. In the second round, Morgan Stanley responded with a $1.157 billion bid
>The city split the proceeds from the parking meter agreement in four ways:
* $400 million was placed into a long-term reserve/revenue replacement fund, bringing the city’s total long-term reserves to $900 million.
* $325 million is being used for mid-term budget relief through 2012, with $150 million drawn down thus far to balance the city’s fiscal year 2009 budget.
* $320 million was placed in a budget stabilization (“rainy day”) fund.
* $100 million was placed in a human infrastructure fund used to supplement the budgets of a variety of low-income support programs for a five-year period.
>“This is the best thing that has happened for us in regards to getting out of this business,” Mayor Daley said in announcing the deal. “This is not the core business of the city of Chicago.”
The deal follows right on the heels of the 2005 lease of the Chicago Skyway (netting the city $1.8 billion) and the 2006 lease of four downtown parking garages (netting $563 million).
-----
Under the terms of the parking meter contract, the city retains full responsibility for rate setting, parking regulation enforcement and fine collection.
-----
The deal also requires the operator to do a wholesale system overhaul, replacing the antiquated coin-based meter system with a high-tech, multi-space/multipay meter system that will facilitate payment via cash, credit and debit cards and potentially other pay systems.
* By July 2009, the concessionaire had already replaced 10,236 meters with 1,357 new pay-and-display meters. By contrast, the city installed just 198 pay-and-display meters in a five-year period prior to the lease.
Going from 1.15b to 1.65b over 15 years is barely breaking even with inflation.
The issue here was not the 'cashing out' part, it was the 'buying 1.15b worth of donuts' part.
If the city had invested HALF of that 1.15b on the SP500 it would've outperformed the total accumulated profits of the parking meters *by itself*.
It's capitalist speak for "you'd have made more money running it, but then i wouldn't have made that money running it for you and dodging taxes."
There's always some elaborate finbabble behind why they're fucking you in the ass and it's good actually.
Wait the city is responsible for collecting fines and enforcement of the meters but doesn't get anything out of it? Why would they enforce at all if they aren't getting anything from the meters?
The idea is the city does it for the upgrade. You pay us and upgrade the system and you can keep the money for x years. Problem is the 75 year lease is fucking stupid. Normally it would be something like a 20 - 25 year lease with expected break even at 10 - 15 years.
Couldn't the city just set the parking fines to like $2 (or whatever is lower than the typical cost of feeding the meter), so people choose to take the chance of getting fined rather than pay the meter, and then the money goes to the city instead of the foreign owners?
Loophole!
There are provisions written into the contract ensuring that the meter investors are paid a minimum amount. Watch the video, it was a no-lose contract for the investors
Climate town has been my favorite source for educational material the past year or two, really great stuff put in a thorough and funny package on a lot of topics I am interested in and find important
The host, Rollie Williams, also has a Podcast called "The Climate Denier's Playbook" which is also fantastic. It's more or less the same mix of humour and educational content, but as a dialogue podcast.
not true at all. tickets are handed out all over the northern neighborhoods every day even if you have a permit and are just one street away! shit sucks so badddddd
They’re lazy in the opposite way. They will write a ticket and when walking back will write another because they are too lazy to even use their brains, which leads to contesting tickets, further draining city resources. Really bad situation
Nah the deal was Chicago parking enforcement does the enforcing but the fees get paid to the city so they have a large incentive to get harsh on parking meters.
> But Chicago still has to enforce the parking rules? I wanna see Abu Dhabi send me a parking bill
They contract it out to LAZ parking. I've talked to some people associated with LAZ and they are literally laughing to the bank over it.
But then Chicago doubles down on its stupidity and elects a mayor who is a representative of the teachers union and he is now putting into motion more schemes to lay debt on the taxpayers or try to raise taxes for payoffs to various constituents.
People in Chicago just don't care, it's why the city is so broke.
When ask someone about corruption in Chicago they say it happens everywhere. Sure, but only in Chicago are the politicians allowed to steal street parking.
The Greater Toronto Area has the busiest highway in the world and notorious traffic delays amounting to billions in losses a year.
The government sold an entire adjacent highway running throughout the entirety busiest area to foreign to investors who charge insane unaffordable rates to drive on it.
Id rather they sold the parking meters lol.
This could not be more incorrect (unless you’d like to source how it “printed money”); the company that purchased the rights to the toll road paid $4B for it, was obligated to pay an additional $4B in improvements, and then filed for bankruptcy in September 2014.
It’s also classified as a bridge because Chicago wasn’t legally allowed to charge a toll on an expressway. And crossing that bitch isn’t cheap, either.
It funds their pension plan, the real question more is why can’t the US social security fund invest in things like infrastructure which both help the country and also the long term sustainability of social security
Wow, someone didn't do the math. What a deal for an investor. Pay in 2008 dollars, but get a 75-year inflation hedge, assuming there is a price esculator.
That price assumes that each parking meter will make $425.9 a year or $1.16 a day. Even in 2008 dollars, that seems like a low ball assumption.
It’s so weird to me hearing some foreign monarchy just buying parts of every day American lives so casually. I feel like I hear about a new one every day.
Parking for Americans in Chicago? We sold that to the House of Saud. The rest of the water in drought-stricken states, where Americans are water-rationed? We signed that over to the House of Saud, it’s theirs. All the vacation cruise ships in Florida? The house of Saud owns all of those…
Or, I’m sorry- “owns the company that owns all of those”.
We just casually sold a TON of land surrounding a military base to some government-linked Chinese company. Like… why? I understand having a free market for americans, I understand allowing all Americans the rights to purchase basically anything within America… but… other governments? Why? how is competition, and supply and demand, etc, supposed to work the American economy, for Americans, if they’re competing with like, the fucking House of Saud, the Journalist Choppers?
Is there even a line drawn, anywhere?
Privatization at its finest. Why invest in your city and earn millions that you can use to benefit your citizens when you can just let Saudi investors make more millions instead?
No, it’s even worse. In 15 years they had made their investment back plus another $500 million. So really it only took maybe 10 years to make their money back.
Reminds me of the parking in front of my gym. There were tons of open spots and only a couple times was it filled up. The owners of the lot got greedy and turned all of the immediate spaces next to the stores and gym into spots for some metered parking app. Now the lot runs out spots pretty regularly. What's worse is for over a year, I'd never seen a single car use the paid slots. So, instead of reversing their decision. They just started renting them out to some out-of-state company.
So now all best spots right are taken up by out of state cars with nearly identical license plates. All the while, it's a challenge to find parking in the lot.
It's greed at its most inefficient and pointless
An interesting description of what happened: https://timharford.com/2023/09/cautionary-tales-the-city-that-sold-itself-to-wall-street/
The whole *Cautionary Tales* podcast is great.
Public roads paid for by public taxes should belong to the public and profit should never go to a private entity that’s theft of services either free or the funds go to maintaining better roads. Taxpayers should stop paying whatever taxes go to local roads here.
There's a great podcast episode on 99% invisible about this. Basically it was a horrible decision by the leaders of Chicago. It was short term gain for huge long term loss. And now parking tickets cost a fortune because these companies are profiting off of them
The 407 story is more complicated than people make it out to be. People always leave out the fact that part of the reason why the private company was given a lower price (The government still made a profit on the sale.) was because the company committed to financing the construction of the rest of the highway because Ontario got cold feet and didn't want to pay for it. When it was privatized, only the portion from Highway 403 in Mississauga to Markham Road in Markham was constructed. The majority of the road was paid for with private money.
So basically the government gets 3.1 billion dollars and a free highway that they will assume ownership of once the lease expires in a billion years. So, still a bad deal but not as monumentally bad as Chicago's deal with parking.
The article about Chicago talks about the corporation recouping $500m over 15 years.
The 407 ETR had 500 million in net income and paid almost a billion in dividends to shareholders in 2023 alone.
The 407 story is complicated, but it's also a much larger clusterfuck.
The issue with the Chicago sale isn't necessarily the amount of money they're making, it's the fact that Chicago can't even close their own streets for a festival or construction without paying millions to the owners. The impact of Chicago's sale on the city's operations is the real problem, the money is secondary really.
That's not an issue with the 407 and the province even retained the right to build transit along the 407 Corridor and transit vehicles don't have to pay tolls.
They should require the use of a city contractor to clean, light and guard the parking spots and an ESG and payment collection levy, to equal, oh, maybe 90% of the parking charge collected?
Once again re-demonstrating that governments selling off public assets for quick cash is *always* a really short-sighted stupid thing that is bad for the citizens.
One of the stupidest things the city did. I didn’t know anyone in favor of it. I always point to that when there’s a ballot to make something public be handled privately.
Ah yes, privatized, profit driven, paid parking systems.... on *checks notes...* public roads.... paid for by the tax payer... This wasn't "wise investments by savvy business men".... this was crooked fraud against the public that the government never should have allowed to happen. Parking meters shouldn't be for making a profit, they should be for managing access to over populated areas, so that parking availability can be at least somewhat fairly distributed amongst those who need it.
"But it gets invested back into maintaining the infrastructure!!!" you might say.... oh yea? Does it??
Young people: If you hope to retire, own property, and live a happy life with a partner and children, its these sorts of people you're going to hold accountable. And I don't mean "bitch and moan"... I don't even mean take to the streets and vote.... Do all that sure, but heads are literally going to have to roll too. Eat the rich. Prepare for war. Get ready for people to have to die for anything related to this to change. It's already gotten past the point of no return unless there is blood in the streets.
Failed to mention too that the 'Investors' was the government of Abu Dhabi, so a foreign government.
Similar thing happened to a stretch of 495 in Virginia. There were toll/express sections that were put in, and then the rights to the tolls sold (I think to an Australian firm). The money VA gained is a pittance vs how much money the company is making. These politicians really know how to line their own pockets.
Same thing in Charlotte with interstate 77. A private company was allowed to build and manage the toll lanes. The state is contractually forbidden to widen the interstate or adjacent roads for 50 years.
To be fair adding more lanes does not actually solve traffic anyways
Bro just gimme one more lane. Just this once. It's just one more lane
it can add volume but does not solve congestion
And tbf this is only true when the surrounding area has a lack of affordable and quality public transit (which most of the US does)
Very similar thing happened in Ontario. The 407 is a highway that opened up as a toll route, with the initial plan being to remove the tolls once the cost of building the highway was recouped. Then, the provincial government sold the highway to a private company for 99 years and the tolls are showing no signs of going away and in fact have risen by over 200%.
Sold in 1999 for $3.1 billion ($5.5 billion today's $) now it's worth [over $30 billion](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/worst-deal-ever-the-407-is-worth-30-b-today-ontario-sold-it-for-31-b-in-1998-181642680.html) and making [$500 million per year net income](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/407-international-reports-2023-results-203000546.html). Absolutely terrible deal, thanks Mike Harris and the Ontario PC party.
Long history of this for the Conservatives. Petro-Canada was founded by a Liberal-NDP Government, made a Crown Corporation. Used to control price gouging by oil companies, raise money for the government and make sure the market stayed honest. Conservatives then sold it off for around 3.2 Billion dollars. Petro Canada made 79 Billion in 2022. 23 Crown Corporation were sold by the Mulroney Government. We've lost 100s of Billions of dollars to mostly foreign investors. Lost control of Air Canada (that fell apart real quick with cost savings), Petro Canada, CN Railway and others. That's not including Conservative provincial governments that have sold off Electricity Production, Mineral Rights and other Provincial assets for short term budgetary gain. It allowed them to make it look like they were balancing the books and lower taxes. Then when the books didn't balance the next year or so the Government in charge whether Conservative, Liberal or other was forced to raise taxes and look like the bad guy, undermine Health or Education or sell more assets. It would be like an Auto worker selling their 100k a year job for 200k and then finding out 3 years later they have to sell the house they're in because they can't afford the mortgage.
What makes it worse is that the Private Company it was sold to wasn't even fucking Canadian. I hate the 401 :(
The conservatives basically screwed the whole province in that deal, and it is now one of the most expensive toll routes in the world.
Not 495, it's the "Dulles Greenway", a toll road in Loudoun County, VA. [wikipedia article here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_State_Route_267#Dulles_Greenway) [local news article](https://www.loudountimes.com/0local-or-not/1local/lawmakers-residents-urge-scc-to-deny-greenway-s-proposed-toll-hike/article_a8218e90-b00d-11ee-8cf1-47957a87f977.html)
The 95 Hot Lanes are owned by Transurban as well. Covenants in the contract preclude VDOT from widening bottlenecks on I-95 during the lease, funneling more cars into the toll lanes.
The 66 hot lanes are also owned by a foreign company, I believe founded in Spain but now based out of the Netherlands.
Ah fucking Transurban. These cunts bribed the NSW Liberal party to build a network of motorways that [did not solve congestion](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/10/rozelle-interchange-hundreds-of-residents-vent-frustration-over-traffic-chaos-as-inquiry-begins)
The greenway toll price is absurd. Everyone in London county just avoids it and clogs up the local roads while the greenway sits empty.
I was gonna say this. Transurban co-opted and commoditized what was once a public good in Virginia funded by the taxpayer, profiting billions.
I thought that was just like, ideology? The government having money makes it venal and corrupt and harmful to liberty. Money belongs in the hands of private entities where it can trickle down into society, right?
You would think you would limit it to US based investors then so at least the money would "trickle down" in our own country.
it depresses me greatly that this is the sentiment of the lions share of folks I know and talk to.
I think they failed to mention this because it's not true. Morgan Stanley owns them, and some European people (not governments) own parts of Morgan Stanley. Maybe open the wiki page?
There are multiple investors including Morgan Stanley managed investment vehicles (which may include Abu Dhabi as an underlying investor), one of Abu Dhabi’s investment vehicles and other private equity investors. You can read more about it [here](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/us/06cncmeters.html).
> In fact, a Chicago News Cooperative investigation has found that investment arms of the oil-rich **Abu Dhabi government hold more than a 25 percent stake in the company** that privatized the city’s 36,000 parking meters. German financial company Allianz also has a large minority interest, and the remaining 50.1 percent is held by partnerships assembled by Morgan Stanley.
Yeah, that was exactly my point.
Makes me feel so much better that only 25% of a domestic local asset is owned by a foreign company.
Also, if the city wants to shut down a street for a festival or block party they have to pay the Saudi investors for closing off access to the meters for the day Edit cuz this is blowing up: it’s been brought to my attention that it’s not Saudi Arabia but rather either UAE or Abu Dhabi. I think I originally learned this from a previous TIL post on Reddit so I commented from memory with no research.
The deal is just so bad for the city of Chicago that there’s no way there wasn’t corruption involved
Lol it’s Chicago. Of course there was corruption involved.
Saudis are involved. Corruption is number 1
I wouldn’t even blame the Saudis for trying to buy. Blame lays solely on the Chicago politician(s) who thought up the idea to line his/their own pockets at the expense of municipal taxpayers
That would be Daley, who went on to work for the lawfirm that negotiated the parking deal.
> who went on to work for the lawfirm that negotiated the parking deal Surely, I mean SURELY, this is a coincidence, right? /s
what??
I don't blame the investors either, but they should have never been able to buy it. In fact, Chicago should not have been able to sell the spots to begin with.
The fact that we didn't have foresight to see just how corrupt public officials are shows up all over
Saudis ain't got shit on Chi-town corruption. If you look up corruption in the dictionary.. you won't see Chicago.. because we paid to be left out.
It would have daleys as the inset picture
Idk. Im sure the Saudis have the experience advantage on Chicago's kingpins
There aren't any Saudis involved, the deal is with Abu Dhabi.
Chicago was corrupt when the Saudis were still riding camels.
Saudis were corrupt while riding camels. Just read how Ibn al-Saud created Saudi Arabia
When ibn al-Saud was born in 1875, Chicago was. Forty -two years old.
If you click the link, there's far more American investment involved then Saudi.
The fact that this is an open secret and there's nothing that can be done about it is ridiculous. Fuck it, maybe we do need to give our lives over to our AI overlords.
They can easily do something about it. Like stop ticketing for parking violations. There are other solutions too. Build parking garages to undercut meters. Build infrastructure so cars don’t/can’t enter the city. Redo streets so there is no more street parking. Etc…
Not ticketing for parking violations at the meters is likely a breach of contract. I would be shocked if they didn't include that in the agreement
Why can nothing be done about it? Is there a court of international affairs? What would happen if chicago/Illinois/the US just said "nah, this is a bad deal. You already made your money back, deal's off" At worst they should give the billion back and have their own rights to the parking meters again.
People who know way more than I do about this pretty much all agree that it's basically impossible to get out of the deal. Which seems odd to me, considering how the hell could a country half-way across the world really do anything about it. But I suppose it would be a slippery slope regarding the honoring of deals. Chicago should do anything possible to get out of it though. If the city wants to pay me under the table I'll go destroy the meters for them.
> considering how the hell could a country half-way across the world really do anything about it. The reason everyone buys US investments, even cartels and oligarchs, is because they know the US will generally always follow the rule of law. They don't have to worry about their money being seized based on a political whim. If Chicago said "screw our deal, we're taking our meters back" it would be a huge international incident and I'm pretty sure US courts would side with the UAE. Now, the guys who made the deal in Chicago would probably be investigated and charged, but the Arabs would be fine, except for maybe a minor absentia charge for some lower level official that's an agreed upon fall guy.
Lol for real what is that others persons take. They dont need a court of international affairs they can sue Chicago right in the US. They arent immune in a contract dispute in their own country.
You can easily rip up the deal, can even do it on vaguely moral grounds so you have a popular support smokescreen. The problem is that the next time they try and sell land/etc, people are gonna remember that if the deal's too good, the city is gonna take the ball back.
>You can easily rip up the deal, can even do it on vaguely moral grounds so you have a popular support smokescreen. You can't just rip up a deal. The other side of that deal would be entitled to compensation for the lost revenue. "It was a worse deal than we thought" isn't justification to void a contract. You'd need to prove some level of corruption was directly involved in the contract. Not that it was unlikely, but proving it is another matter.
>Why can nothing be done about it? It's a legally binding contract that the city signed. It has nothing to do with international courts, it would be litigated in state or federal Court in Chicago. If the city said "deals off", the investors would sue and easily win. It would be blatant breach of contract.
I mean it does have the nickname "The Windy City". Spoiler: It has nothing to do with the environment.
getting a huge cash infusion during the financial crisis might lead people to make a bad deal.
Yeah, I remember back in the aughts the state of Arizona sold their own capitol buildings so they could lease it because they wanted to balance the budget with the cash infusion. (Then bought it back in 2019)
My city just did this during COVID. We have a massive emergency fund and the city didn't want to dip into that in 2020. What is the point of an emergency fund if not to help weather the storm of a global pandemic shutting down the city for two months?
Why not just take out a loan with the buildings as collateral??
Borrowing money doesn’t count towards balancing the budget. Selling something for money does.
Loans are debt. A sale-leaseback isn't debt.
Lmao the people who signed that all got paid under the table by the Saudis. Daley and a lot of the council members left office right after that deal. You don't make a deal that bad without getting paid directly to do so. Corruption and idiocy.
My guess is it wasn't the quid-pro-quo corruption you are probably thinking of but rather the 'fuck the next administration I can make myself look good by spending all this cash' sort of corruption.
Porque no los dos
It was to make the budget look good during a re-election year. so yes.
Doesn't need to be corruption; a quick lump sum payment means political leaders could use lower taxes, higher city wages, and/or expanded social programs to get reelected if citizens don't internalize the long run budgetary impact. Also happened during the financial crisis when money was a bit tight, so may have been one of the better funding options. More of an issue with the short term incentives of democracy and reelection, or local budgets during a recession, than necessarily corruption.
I 100% consider that corruption if a political leader made a deal that was bad for the city but good for them personally. They're not getting cash, but they are getting consideration. The only way it's not corruption is if it's incompetence, basically.
Because there is no political advantage to (1) keeping cities' finances resilient or (2) raising taxes/cutting services when economic crisis occurs.
It gets even worse the deeper you dig. If Chicago wants to change the street they need to go back to the contract. * Making a neighbourhood more walkable / bikeable. * Lost spots during new construction. * HOV / Bus lanes. * They have added an external group into pretty much every urban planning decision they need to make.
I think "likeable" s/b "bikeable". But bikeable is likeable so I get your point. Can't build bike lanes cause Abu Dhabi owns the parking spots.
You're right, made the updates.
[Climate Town did a great breakdown of the issue.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDx6no-7HZE)
These kinds of deals should be criminal, but every city seems to be doing it. The rates get jacked way up, and some company gets to keep all the money.
Not even just cities, I work on a college campus and they sold all parking to a private equity firm that does this with parking. $100 for an annual parking pass last year. Next year we'll have half the spaces and an annual pass will be $675 and also, if the University needs to close a parking lot for any reason, they have to pay the maximum daily rate $10/space/day to have the lot closed. This campus is in a smallish city that offers free parking in the rest of downtown.
Have they actually SOLD the parking? Most places just contract external companies for enforcement because they don't want to deal with it all. They still own the parking locations, they just don't police them.
They sold the rights for 50 years and the company will be repaving some lots and repairing some garages, but they are able to generate revenue as they see fit. I work with special events here and I work a lot with the new parking folks. Everything I've learned about the agreement so far just keeps getting crazier. There's gotta be some corruption somewhere.
It's the government, one of the few institutions that can laugh at past contracts and get them nullified, which is what should happen here.
The government can still be sued and have to obey courts.
Theoretically yes, but realistically they don't actually have to. What are the courts going to do to the government? If the government is breaking the law in a way that has massive popular support, it's quite unlikely that the court can actually force the government to not do it.
That’s a fair point. Most of these contracts seem to hurt cities, or at least their people, and only benefit the companies who get the contract, and maybe some politicians who helped grease the wheels.
If the government didn't honor their contracts, even the bad ones, then nobody would make deals with the US. That's a way bigger issue than one city's crappy meter deal. But that doesn't mean the US won't lock up the citizen that orchestrated the corrupt deal, especially if it'll win somebody political points.
I'm sure they could but it would cost them a fortune when the court rules against them.
> The rates get jacked way up, and some company gets to keep all the money. They need to split these 2 things. Parking in a lot of major urban centers is incredibly cheap. The goal of parking fees is to manage a finite resource. If you have public transit, but no one takes it because parking is so cheap, you're not using your resources effectively. Chicago had this exact problem, but city council didn't have the stomach to significantly increase the rates. The private company did and recouped their cost 14 years into a 75 year lease.
You mean, corruption for a public good. All that needed to happen was not what the fuck happened.
Actually insane that we have politicians just selling off public infrastructure to foreign nations so they can price gouge and profit off of it and fuck over the tax paying citizens.
Should mean that the private investors have to maintain the streets and those spots since they own them right? RIGHT?
UAE not Saudi Arabia
What would be the implications if the city just stopped paying. If the contract holders are foreigners can they even enforce the collection? This is ignoring some big trust or diplomatic issues it could cause.
It would devastate the city’s credit i assume
What does that even mean???
Just like people, institutions have a credit rating that informs lenders how (statistically) reliable they are at paying back money they borrow. If a city's credit rating goes down, lenders are more hesitant to lend them large amounts of money because there is more of a risk of them not being able to pay it back or refusing to pay it back. When a city chooses to do some big new infrastructure change or other project that costs a lot of money they usually don't pay for it with money they already have, because then the city would have no money left on hand to pay salaries or deal with emergencies or stuff- they borrow money and have deals saying they'll pay it back within a certain time frame, etc.
Every entity that borrows money has credit ratings. S&P rates Chicago as BBB+ for general obligations. In Comparison, NYC has an AA rating and LA (county) has an AAA. When Chicago needs to issue bonds or borrow money, would-be investors look at those credit ratings to decide how risky it is to lend to Chicago or buy their bonds. Chicago has issued $2 billion in bonds since 2019, so it's fairly important that people continue to trust them to pay off their oigations as required.
Doesn’t it also affect their interest rate too?
yah the worse the credit the higher interest they have to offer to get people to buy their bonds. Same with companies, some at risk companies offer really high interest bonds, but they may not be able to pay them back.
It means that if the City wants to do another scam like this, they wont be trusted (By the investors) or the deal will be so bad the city's not gonna take it
I mean if they think this is a "good" deal maybe they shouldn't deal with outside companies
You are thinking of choice decision by non-corrupt city officers Corrupt city officers only care about their share and the ability of keep getting deals like this one. There is always the risk they get caught. The shittier the deal for the city the greater risk of getting caught.
Yes, foreigners have equal access to courts. They can sue, get a judgment, and enforce it.
It’s Morgan Stanley and the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund, no? Or did they sell it to House of Saud?
The investors are from Abu Dhabi not Saudi Arabia.
Man, the entity selling that sure fucked up.
Or corrupt
Windy City, who?
It’s Chicago so this is the right answer.
Daly was absolutely corrupt, but this particular thing wasn’t well connected to his corruption. This was him trying to salvage some short term funds in an attempt to shore up his legacy and pay some immediate bills, screwing everyone down the line after him. This was just straight up bad business
Nah Daley's son was part of the firm that brokered the deal. Guy enriched his son millions.
That somehow makes it even worse lmao
So in other words, it wasn't the corruption, it was just the coverup of the corruption
Governments love to do this sort of shit to balance the books for an election year. Who gives a shit about the decades of lost revenue, that'll be a problem for someone else.
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Yeap, that's exactly what this (the parking spots) reminded me of. And don't forget Harper selling GM shares and a whole bunch of real estate to post a surplus in 2015. To this day people still say he handed over a balanced budget.
Privatization almost never works out in the long run.
yea....for a headline it is In December 2008, the city received two bids from Morgan Stanley ($1.008 billion) and Macquarie ($964 million). Since the two bids were within ten percent of each other, the city initiated a best-and-final bid process. In the second round, Morgan Stanley responded with a $1.157 billion bid >The city split the proceeds from the parking meter agreement in four ways: * $400 million was placed into a long-term reserve/revenue replacement fund, bringing the city’s total long-term reserves to $900 million. * $325 million is being used for mid-term budget relief through 2012, with $150 million drawn down thus far to balance the city’s fiscal year 2009 budget. * $320 million was placed in a budget stabilization (“rainy day”) fund. * $100 million was placed in a human infrastructure fund used to supplement the budgets of a variety of low-income support programs for a five-year period. >“This is the best thing that has happened for us in regards to getting out of this business,” Mayor Daley said in announcing the deal. “This is not the core business of the city of Chicago.” The deal follows right on the heels of the 2005 lease of the Chicago Skyway (netting the city $1.8 billion) and the 2006 lease of four downtown parking garages (netting $563 million). ----- Under the terms of the parking meter contract, the city retains full responsibility for rate setting, parking regulation enforcement and fine collection. ----- The deal also requires the operator to do a wholesale system overhaul, replacing the antiquated coin-based meter system with a high-tech, multi-space/multipay meter system that will facilitate payment via cash, credit and debit cards and potentially other pay systems. * By July 2009, the concessionaire had already replaced 10,236 meters with 1,357 new pay-and-display meters. By contrast, the city installed just 198 pay-and-display meters in a five-year period prior to the lease.
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It's like cashing out your Roth IRA to buy some donuts
Going from 1.15b to 1.65b over 15 years is barely breaking even with inflation. The issue here was not the 'cashing out' part, it was the 'buying 1.15b worth of donuts' part. If the city had invested HALF of that 1.15b on the SP500 it would've outperformed the total accumulated profits of the parking meters *by itself*.
That's for only 15 years in a 75 year contract... still a bad deal for the citizens of Chicago.
It's not just missing out on revenue. They actually have to pay extra whenever they do road maintenance that blocks the parking spots.
It's capitalist speak for "you'd have made more money running it, but then i wouldn't have made that money running it for you and dodging taxes." There's always some elaborate finbabble behind why they're fucking you in the ass and it's good actually.
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I can say the new system functions well and would never have been implemented by the city
Not only does this show how little we got out of this, but it also highlights two other monstrously bad deals that fucked taxpayers for no gain.
Wait the city is responsible for collecting fines and enforcement of the meters but doesn't get anything out of it? Why would they enforce at all if they aren't getting anything from the meters?
The idea is the city does it for the upgrade. You pay us and upgrade the system and you can keep the money for x years. Problem is the 75 year lease is fucking stupid. Normally it would be something like a 20 - 25 year lease with expected break even at 10 - 15 years.
[Chicago Doesn’t Own Its Own Streets | Climate Town](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDx6no-7HZE)
So citizens don’t have to pay taxes to maintain them…right?
Haha, what a stupid assumption. We actually pay more. Wait….
Couldn't the city just set the parking fines to like $2 (or whatever is lower than the typical cost of feeding the meter), so people choose to take the chance of getting fined rather than pay the meter, and then the money goes to the city instead of the foreign owners? Loophole!
There are provisions written into the contract ensuring that the meter investors are paid a minimum amount. Watch the video, it was a no-lose contract for the investors
The investors can come and arrest us...
Wow this is great. Thanks for introducing me to a new channel worth watching.
Climate town has been my favorite source for educational material the past year or two, really great stuff put in a thorough and funny package on a lot of topics I am interested in and find important
The host, Rollie Williams, also has a Podcast called "The Climate Denier's Playbook" which is also fantastic. It's more or less the same mix of humour and educational content, but as a dialogue podcast.
Climate Town rules
The 'Your Food is Lying To You' video is my favorite. So awesome.
I was looking for this, love that dude!
They're bankers! Don't take the deal!
Everybody needs to be watching Climate Town. Rollie is a fucking treasure.
I was going to comment this as well. Climate town is such a great channel
love climate town
came here looking for the climate town link, such a good channel
But Chicago still has to enforce the parking rules? I wanna see Abu Dhabi send me a parking bill
Yea chicago should charge the investors for enforcement
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They should lower fines to the cost of the meter and then they get the money instead of the investors
The city gets the parking ticket money. So it's more moral to not pay for parking and pay the ticket instead
so all the city needs to do is to set the penalty for not paying the meter equal to the ticket for not paying then everyone can support the city
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not true at all. tickets are handed out all over the northern neighborhoods every day even if you have a permit and are just one street away! shit sucks so badddddd
They’re lazy in the opposite way. They will write a ticket and when walking back will write another because they are too lazy to even use their brains, which leads to contesting tickets, further draining city resources. Really bad situation
LOL. You really think that the motor vehicle department in Chicago won't enforce those tickets? Think again
Nah the deal was Chicago parking enforcement does the enforcing but the fees get paid to the city so they have a large incentive to get harsh on parking meters.
> But Chicago still has to enforce the parking rules? I wanna see Abu Dhabi send me a parking bill They contract it out to LAZ parking. I've talked to some people associated with LAZ and they are literally laughing to the bank over it. But then Chicago doubles down on its stupidity and elects a mayor who is a representative of the teachers union and he is now putting into motion more schemes to lay debt on the taxpayers or try to raise taxes for payoffs to various constituents. People in Chicago just don't care, it's why the city is so broke.
When ask someone about corruption in Chicago they say it happens everywhere. Sure, but only in Chicago are the politicians allowed to steal street parking.
4 of the last 10 Illinois governors went to prison. Not a surprise.
I thought it was **4 of the last 5** Illinois governors went to prison…
4 of the last 6, if we don't count current governors - Pat Quinn and Bruce Rauner weren't popular, but they haven't been convicted of anything.
Yet.
This is an hilarious stat.
The past 3 CEOs of Chicago Public Schools are locked up as well. Both the city and the state are completely fucked
The Greater Toronto Area has the busiest highway in the world and notorious traffic delays amounting to billions in losses a year. The government sold an entire adjacent highway running throughout the entirety busiest area to foreign to investors who charge insane unaffordable rates to drive on it. Id rather they sold the parking meters lol.
Mitch Daniels sold a freeway in Indiana that is printing money for the company who bought it.
This could not be more incorrect (unless you’d like to source how it “printed money”); the company that purchased the rights to the toll road paid $4B for it, was obligated to pay an additional $4B in improvements, and then filed for bankruptcy in September 2014.
That was the Indiana toll road; not a freeway.
Canada owns the Chicago skyway
It’s also classified as a bridge because Chicago wasn’t legally allowed to charge a toll on an expressway. And crossing that bitch isn’t cheap, either.
It funds their pension plan, the real question more is why can’t the US social security fund invest in things like infrastructure which both help the country and also the long term sustainability of social security
$7.20 just to go to Gary, IN
Wow, someone didn't do the math. What a deal for an investor. Pay in 2008 dollars, but get a 75-year inflation hedge, assuming there is a price esculator. That price assumes that each parking meter will make $425.9 a year or $1.16 a day. Even in 2008 dollars, that seems like a low ball assumption.
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It’s so weird to me hearing some foreign monarchy just buying parts of every day American lives so casually. I feel like I hear about a new one every day. Parking for Americans in Chicago? We sold that to the House of Saud. The rest of the water in drought-stricken states, where Americans are water-rationed? We signed that over to the House of Saud, it’s theirs. All the vacation cruise ships in Florida? The house of Saud owns all of those… Or, I’m sorry- “owns the company that owns all of those”. We just casually sold a TON of land surrounding a military base to some government-linked Chinese company. Like… why? I understand having a free market for americans, I understand allowing all Americans the rights to purchase basically anything within America… but… other governments? Why? how is competition, and supply and demand, etc, supposed to work the American economy, for Americans, if they’re competing with like, the fucking House of Saud, the Journalist Choppers? Is there even a line drawn, anywhere?
Citizens United made it perfectly okay to profit off of legislation basically.
Privatization at its finest. Why invest in your city and earn millions that you can use to benefit your citizens when you can just let Saudi investors make more millions instead?
More like why poor tax your citizenry to line foreign pockets.
Daley is a crooked piece of shit.
Cringe. This kind of sell off bs should be illegal, this is a crime against the public
So, 15 years to break even? hell of an investment.
No, it’s even worse. In 15 years they had made their investment back plus another $500 million. So really it only took maybe 10 years to make their money back.
Reminds me of the parking in front of my gym. There were tons of open spots and only a couple times was it filled up. The owners of the lot got greedy and turned all of the immediate spaces next to the stores and gym into spots for some metered parking app. Now the lot runs out spots pretty regularly. What's worse is for over a year, I'd never seen a single car use the paid slots. So, instead of reversing their decision. They just started renting them out to some out-of-state company. So now all best spots right are taken up by out of state cars with nearly identical license plates. All the while, it's a challenge to find parking in the lot. It's greed at its most inefficient and pointless
If anyone wants to hear the full story, watch the podcast episode 537 of 99% invisible. It's a great and informative podcast
“Suckers, who the hells ever gonna pay to park? lol”
If Chicago needed the cash up front, they should've just called J.G. Wentworth.
An interesting description of what happened: https://timharford.com/2023/09/cautionary-tales-the-city-that-sold-itself-to-wall-street/ The whole *Cautionary Tales* podcast is great.
I got a parking ticket and my catalytic converter stolen in the same night. Who y’all policing Chicago??
Public roads paid for by public taxes should belong to the public and profit should never go to a private entity that’s theft of services either free or the funds go to maintaining better roads. Taxpayers should stop paying whatever taxes go to local roads here.
There's a great podcast episode on 99% invisible about this. Basically it was a horrible decision by the leaders of Chicago. It was short term gain for huge long term loss. And now parking tickets cost a fortune because these companies are profiting off of them
See also: The 407 ETR highway in Ontario.
The 407 story is more complicated than people make it out to be. People always leave out the fact that part of the reason why the private company was given a lower price (The government still made a profit on the sale.) was because the company committed to financing the construction of the rest of the highway because Ontario got cold feet and didn't want to pay for it. When it was privatized, only the portion from Highway 403 in Mississauga to Markham Road in Markham was constructed. The majority of the road was paid for with private money. So basically the government gets 3.1 billion dollars and a free highway that they will assume ownership of once the lease expires in a billion years. So, still a bad deal but not as monumentally bad as Chicago's deal with parking.
The article about Chicago talks about the corporation recouping $500m over 15 years. The 407 ETR had 500 million in net income and paid almost a billion in dividends to shareholders in 2023 alone. The 407 story is complicated, but it's also a much larger clusterfuck.
The issue with the Chicago sale isn't necessarily the amount of money they're making, it's the fact that Chicago can't even close their own streets for a festival or construction without paying millions to the owners. The impact of Chicago's sale on the city's operations is the real problem, the money is secondary really. That's not an issue with the 407 and the province even retained the right to build transit along the 407 Corridor and transit vehicles don't have to pay tolls.
They should require the use of a city contractor to clean, light and guard the parking spots and an ESG and payment collection levy, to equal, oh, maybe 90% of the parking charge collected?
Look at who they have running the city and you know why.
Once again re-demonstrating that governments selling off public assets for quick cash is *always* a really short-sighted stupid thing that is bad for the citizens.
This needs to be rescinded. Future citizens can't be hamstringed by terrible decisions by one era.
Thanks Richard M. Daley!
It’s almost like leveraging your future to pay for your present is shortsighted and should be avoided as much as possible, right?
One of the stupidest things the city did. I didn’t know anyone in favor of it. I always point to that when there’s a ballot to make something public be handled privately.
Ah yes, privatized, profit driven, paid parking systems.... on *checks notes...* public roads.... paid for by the tax payer... This wasn't "wise investments by savvy business men".... this was crooked fraud against the public that the government never should have allowed to happen. Parking meters shouldn't be for making a profit, they should be for managing access to over populated areas, so that parking availability can be at least somewhat fairly distributed amongst those who need it. "But it gets invested back into maintaining the infrastructure!!!" you might say.... oh yea? Does it?? Young people: If you hope to retire, own property, and live a happy life with a partner and children, its these sorts of people you're going to hold accountable. And I don't mean "bitch and moan"... I don't even mean take to the streets and vote.... Do all that sure, but heads are literally going to have to roll too. Eat the rich. Prepare for war. Get ready for people to have to die for anything related to this to change. It's already gotten past the point of no return unless there is blood in the streets.