PGH Council's study implies parking lease price is fair (Pittsburgh: purchase, income)

[pman]

Originally Posted by tranceFusion

I have no bias against profit. I have a bias against earning a profit by charging for access to public land.

no one is forcing the city to keep the garages technically public. would it make you feel better if they were sold outright or is your beef only with the metered spaces portion of the lease?
edited to add: I see you later said you'd be fine. whether "returning to the taxpayers" is putting it into the pension, reducing debt, or temporarily lowering taxes is a whole other debate

It is much more similar to road tolls, which I generally disagree with as well. It would be fairest for the person using the road to pay for it. The reality though is that, in most cases, the road has already been previously funded and the toll is there to make up for some other goverment misstep/shortfall - this is what I disagree with.

that's not exactly true. tolls can very much be used to build and pay for roads. it's actually a fairly good way to get something built if there isn't tax money available. I'm generally pro-toll, as users shouldn't always expect a free ride. (I80 notwithstanding which was trying to siphon off tolls to fund transportation all over the state).

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by tranceFusion

No, it is not the same thing. I haven't paid for the food with my tax dollars already, as I have in the land and pavement of the metered property.

But all the businesses I described occupy land. That is part of what you are paying for--to participate in using the land the business in question sits on.

It is much more similar to road tolls, which I generally disagree with as well. It would be fairest for the person using the road to pay for it. The reality though is that, in most cases, the road has already been previously funded and the toll is there to make up for some other goverment misstep/shortfall - this is what I disagree with.

I'm not sure what you mean by "in most cases, the road has already been previously funded." Roads and related infrastructure (bridges and so forth) take constant maintenance. Gas taxes pay for some of that, but most road funding actually comes from general tax revenues. If you add a toll on a portion of the road system, you will be able to cut that general tax contribution somewhat. That may well help the related government's financial picture a bit, but overall it would take a LOT more tolling to actually cancel out all the general contributions various governments are making to roads.

As I said before, the monopoly we have now is motivated to keep the prices low for the consumer. Private investors will not have that political motivation.

Well, more precisely the monopoly we have now is motivated to keep certain people in political office. Whether that translates into lower parking rates in every case is a different matter.

Moreover, keeping parking rates as low as possible isn't optimal parking policy.

It's when government intervention comes into play that the complex exceptions to these theories are created. I believe we would have a lot larger variety of private parking options had the subsidized parking not existed already.

Again, that is one possibility. Another possibility is that the government's intervention on the supply side--taking all this land out of the general market and dedicating it specifically to parking--has created an artificial oversupply of parking.

But either way, my point stands: eventually we have to transition back to a more sensible parking situation. I can understand wanting to do that gradually, but I can't understand locking us into a bad situation forever.

The correct thing to do would be to sell, not lease, the public parking areas, and use the capital for long-term investments or return it to the taxpayers.

I'm 100% with you when it comes to the garages and lots (noting that using the proceeds to cancel long-term liabilities is one way to return the proceeds to taxpayers).

The metered-spaces are a more difficult question. You have to make an initial choice about the usage of that land, whether it be for additional moving lanes, parking lanes, or turned into non-road space entirely. If you keep them as parking lanes, you probably have to stick with a monopoly model of some sort. Your options are then to accept monopoly pricing and monopoly behavior (which actually might be fine in this case), go with a regulated-monopoly/utility-type approach (the lease is one way of doing that), or keeping it under government control. But even in the first case you are still doing SOME regulating to the extent you are still dictating the lanes be used as parking.

As I have said before, I have no sympathy for those that continue to increase our pension obligations. In the private sector, employees have had to deal with layoffs, loss of benefits, mandatory furloughs, decreased wages, etc. To think government employees should be exempt from this pain on the backs of the private workers who have already suffered is ridiculous.

Then your argument is with the state, because state law dictates that the City has to go to binding arbitration with its police and fire unions.

Until that changes, however, the City has to find a way to function within the constraints the state has imposed on it.

[tranceFusion]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I'm not sure what you mean by "in most cases, the road has already been previously funded." Roads and related infrastructure (bridges and so forth) take constant maintenance. Gas taxes pay for some of that, but most road funding actually comes from general tax revenues. If you add a toll on a portion of the road system, you will be able to cut that general tax contribution somewhat. That may well help the related government's financial picture a bit, but overall it would take a LOT more tolling to actually cancel out all the general contributions various governments are making to roads.

Right, so why aren't general tax revenues reduced when toll roads are introduced? The tolls are being treated as free money, not to cover necessary maintenance costs (which have already been included in the general and gas taxes).

[scrapp]

All this parking discussion doesn't really address the root of the problem: government making benefit/pension promises to workers that they don't properly account for or fund.

David Brooks: America, paralyzed

[pman]

Originally Posted by tranceFusion

Right, so why aren't general tax revenues reduced when toll roads are introduced? The tolls are being treated as free money, not to cover necessary maintenance costs (which have already been included in the general and gas taxes).

not really, tolls often cover the maintenance and construction of roads.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by tranceFusion

Right, so why aren't general tax revenues reduced when toll roads are introduced?

Who says they aren't? Because we are talking about the general budget, there is no way to trace particular dollars through the system. But to the extent a government reduces its obligations to its roads from its general funds, and then subsequently lowers a tax, or doesn't raise a tax as much, or so on, the reduced general expenditures on roads is helping that happen.

The tolls are being treated as free money, not to cover necessary maintenance costs (which have already been included in the general and gas taxes).

I really don't understand the distinction you are drawing. The relevant governments are constantly forming new budgets for their next fiscal period. When they institute a toll, they will then be able to form different budgets in the future, which might have more spending on other things as a result, or lower taxes, or a combination of both, and this will be a decision made over and over again as each new budget is formed throughout the lifetime of the toll.

In that context, I don't know what it means to say the maintenance costs have "already been included in the general and gas taxes." Those circumstances don't last past the first time the relevant government adopts a new budget after the toll (and usually it all happens at roughly the same time).

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by scrapp

All this parking discussion doesn't really address the root of the problem: government making benefit/pension promises to workers that they don't properly account for or fund.

True, but the City doesn't control its fate in that area, because state law dictates that contract disputes with the police and fire unions go to binding arbitration. The state also has a pension contribution fund (based on taxes paid, in part, in Pittsburgh), but it perversely ties the contribution amount to the number of active employees, not the number of pensioners.

So we definitely need to be addressing these issues, but that will take reform at the state level. Meanwhile, the City has to operate within the system as it stands.

[tranceFusion]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

I really don't understand the distinction you are drawing. The relevant governments are constantly forming new budgets for their next fiscal period. When they institute a toll, they will then be able to form different budgets in the future, which might have more spending on other things as a result, or lower taxes, or a combination of both, and this will be a decision made over and over again as each new budget is formed throughout the lifetime of the toll.

In that context, I don't know what it means to say the maintenance costs have "already been included in the general and gas taxes." Those circumstances don't last past the first time the relevant government adopts a new budget after the toll (and usually it all happens at roughly the same time).

Not exactly. You know the spending on road maintenance, and you know the income from gas tax and tolls.. the rest must come from general tax revenue. So, when tolls increase and road maintenance costs don't increase proportionately, the difference is going somewhere else.

It isn't until the toll income exceeds the road maintenance costs that it is so obvious, for example in New Jersey.

Same with the I-80 toll. This seems less fair than increasing general tax - now are you are charging users of one road to maintain roads all over the state.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by tranceFusion

Not exactly. You know the spending on road maintenance, and you know the income from gas tax and tolls.. the rest must come from general tax revenue. So, when tolls increase and road maintenance costs don't increase proportionately, the difference is going somewhere else.

Right--the toll increase reduces the burden that road maintenance would otherwise place on the general budget. But after that point you can't really trace that money specifically--it all just becomes part of the general budgeting process.

Same with the I-80 toll. This seems less fair than increasing general tax - now are you are charging users of one road to maintain roads all over the state.

But that was my point above--many of those people using I-80 are also using other state roads, bridges, and so on, and they are doing so for no charge. Exactly where you choose to toll those people in order to help pay for the entire system of state roads they are using is more a matter of convenience than anything else.

[pman]

Originally Posted by tranceFusion

Not exactly. You know the spending on road maintenance, and you know the income from gas tax and tolls.. the rest must come from general tax revenue. So, when tolls increase and road maintenance costs don't increase proportionately, the difference is going somewhere else.

It isn't until the toll income exceeds the road maintenance costs that it is so obvious, for example in New Jersey.

Same with the I-80 toll. This seems less fair than increasing general tax - now are you are charging users of one road to maintain roads all over the state.

so you're not really against tolls, just how they often used. (See DRPA in the PHily/NJ area where hundreds of millions have been funneled out for economic development projects-aka pork-on both sides of the river). or rendell's use of turnpike debt covered by tolls to fund transportation. that isn't "tolls" that's misusing tolls. tolls can and are used to fund road construction and maintenance. I agree that I80 was unfair, or worse, idiotic. it never had a shot in hell and no sensible person in transportation believed it for a second. it was political.