Here a Tax, There a Fee

The Tribune is noticing Conehead's attempts to kill Chicago....and they actually call it "dumb" (it's a paywalled editorial):

• A new parking meter deal is done and dusted, as City Council on Tuesday approved a $2.53 billion agreement allowing Stonepeak Partners to take over the remaining 57 years of Chicago’s parking meter lease. Good. We were tired of writing about this historic disaster.

  But that doesn’t mean there cannot be another one just ahead.

  Now, aldermen are looking to the future. And as some gaze into their crystal ball, they see a brave new world in which suburbanites pay more to park.

  An idea is floating around to bifurcate parking meter prices, adding a surcharge of 25 to 50 cents an hour for non-Chicagoans who park in the city, according to Ald. Walter “Red” Burnett, 27th.

  It’ll raise revenue, he says, though he couldn’t say how much, and encourage public transit, though that doesn’t take into account the frequent inadequacy of those options from the suburbs, especially on evenings and weekends.

  What we know for sure is that such a move is crazy-town nonsense.

Fifty-cents-an-hour isn't a deal breaker for most suburbanites....until it isn't fifty-cents-an-hour anymore. You can bet the price will go up....because it never goes down.

And there will almost certainly be levels of pricing, like five-bucks-an-hour for a school bus or twenty-per hour for one of those tourist coach liners. It'll add up and make it so even more people don't want to come here. Have you seen what they're charging to rent a car at the airports? Not just the fees - the taxes, too. It's all going to come crashing down at some point.