PARKING HIKE STRIKES OUT
Surge pricing ends for meters near Wrigley; experiment didn’t meet revenue goals
When the City Council doubled parking meter rates around Wrigley Field a year ago, Chief Financial Officer Carole Brown had high hopes the “surge pricing” concept would someday spread beyond sports arenas and into Chicago neighborhoods.
Now, the grand experiment is grinding to an abrupt halt, having failed to generate nearly as much revenue as Brown had anticipated.
“I misprojected . . . parking behavior,” Brown acknowledged on Monday, the opening day for hearings on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s final budget.
“What ended up happening is that fewer people drove down during surge pricing times. They parked outside and walked farther and the differential in pricing just wasn’t big enough.” And let’s not forget one more factor. The Cubs let their division lead slip away, lost the tie-breaker for the Central Division title to the Milwaukee Brewers, which landed the Cubs in the wild card game. And they lost that game to the Colorado Rockies at Wrigley Field on Oct. 2, ending their season.
“It’s not an indictment, but the Cubs didn’t go as long in the playoffs as we thought they might,” Brown said.
“We just didn’t get the yield that we thought we would based at that level of pricing. And frankly, the alderman was supportive of sunsetting it. That’s why we did it at a pilot. So the recommendation is just to sunset the pilot.”
Local Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) said he’s ending the pilot because it “didn’t work” for anybody. Not for Cubs fans. Not for local residents who shop at local stores. And certainly not for local merchants.
“Meters are for business and turnover. If it becomes more expensive to park, it’s more expensive to consumers, and it’s not business friendly for them,” he said.
“Nobody wants to pay more for parking. My residents are happy. They do a lot of shopping and they don’t think they should have to pay more just because there’s an event at Wrigley.”
Tunney noted that the surge pricing concept was supposed to be extended to the areas around all stadiums, including Soldier Field, Guaranteed Rate Field, the United Center and Wintrust Arena.
“It’s not happening. So why should I be the lone person? Since nobody else is engaged and I’m getting complaints, we’re ending it,” he said.
The Wrigley pilot began a year ago. It was limited to 1,100 parking spaces in the Wrigley Field area — bounded, generally, by Irving Park Road, Southport Avenue, Belmont Avenue and Broadway.
Within those boundaries, parking meter rates doubled from $2 an hour to $4 an hour beginning two hours before a game, concert or special event at Wrigley; the higher prices were in effect for seven hours.
The money — revised downward from $2.4 million to $1.6 million — was used to offset the annual payment to Chicago Parking Meters LLC for meters taken out of service for construction and special events or used by people with disabilities.
When the City Council approved the pilot, Brown acknowledged she wanted to launch the surge pricing experiment with a six-fold increase in what was then a $2-an-hour parking rate; the goal was to discourage fans from driving to Cubs games.
“I’ll be honest. I wanted to do $12. And the [local] alderman looked at me like I was crazy,” Brown told the City Council’s Committee on Pedestrian and Traffic Safety at the time.
“I had my CFO hat on, as opposed to my constituents’ hat.”
Tunney nixed the idea of charging whatever the market will bear to avoid what happened after former Mayor Richard M. Daley leased Chicago parking meters and empowered the company to implement a steep schedule of rate hikes.
“Going from $2 to $4 is a big deal. This is what got us into trouble in the first place — because we never properly priced the meters,” Tunney said on that day.
“So when the meters went from 25 cents an hour to $2 an hour, there was a violent reaction from businesses, from residents and such. That’s why I believe in the incremental approach. There was no way I was gonna support going from $2 to $12.”
At the time, aldermen from across the city expressed concern that the surge pricing concept would spread “beyond the sporting arenas into neighborhoods,” including commercials strips and the area surrounding Park District football fields during high school games.
“Whenever the city has found a way to make some money, they tend to expand it,” West Side Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), who cast the only dissenting vote, said at that time.
Now, those fears appear to have been unfounded. The surge pricing experiment appears to be dead — though Brown said: “If aldermen in other areas want to pilot it, we’d be happy to try.”