This week, I was reading through a piece in a German news item....which got to a new weird strategy being openly discussed by the Green Party folks and environmentalists.
The basic idea? You would go and raise parking rates, and park-house property taxes enough....that people traveling around metropolitan areas....would be screwed-over enough.....that they would dump cars and travel via public transportation.
Now....if you were like me.....you'd be laughing at this point. But I sat and pondered over the idea.
Right now....at least in the Wiesbaden area....the general 'on-the-street' rate is around 55-Euro-cents-per-half-hour for the 12-work-hours of the day. For most, it's reasonable.
However, if you raised it to 1.50-Euro-cents-per-half-hour.....would you get aggravated enough to avoid driving or shopping downtown? My guess is that the fairly well-to-do folks would continue on. It'd likely take 2.50 to 3.50 Euro-cents-half-hour to make this a complicated mess.
It's the same with parking garages (public and commercial)....you'd have to raise the rates or property taxes enough.....to make people fussy over this parking situation.
But you have to ask yourself.....in the end, aren't you just eliminating downtown areas to the extent.....that no one wants to waste time or effort, and they look for medium-sized towns or outer-ring areas to conduct business? In simple terms, you'd turn a lot of metropolitan 'big' cities in Germany....into lesser towns.
The question is....do you really need to do this?
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