In an annual ritual that has become as predictable if not as joyous as a New Year’s Eve countdown to midnight, Chicago drivers again will have to dig a little deeper to pay to park at meters in 2013.
Loop rates will go up 75 cents to $6.50 an hour as part of scheduled fee increases included in Mayor Richard Daley’s much-criticized 2008 lease of the city’s meters to Chicago Parking Meters LLC.
Paid street parking in neighborhoods near the Loop will rise 25 cents and reach $4 an hour. Metered spaces in the rest of Chicago also will increase by a quarter per hour, to $2, according to the company.
Come the new year, workers will begin adjusting the now-familiar pay boxes to reflect the new rates in the Loop, from there working outward into the neighborhoods, the company said in a news release Wednesday.
Chicago Parking Meters hopes to have all the meters set to the new rates by the end of February, and drivers won’t have to pay the steeper rate until the box they’re using has been changed.
This is the last of the explicitly defined yearly meter jumps included in the company’s 75-year, $1.15 billion lease. But Chicago drivers shouldn’t expect the cost of parking to level out — starting in 2014, prices can be adjusted annually using a formula tied to the rate of inflation.
Daley’s parking meter deal has become something of a political boogeyman in Chicago over the years.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has opted to bash it, talking occasionally about the bad deal reached by his predecessor and saying he won’t simply pay up when the company hands the city invoices for lost meter revenue due to street closures and other reasons.
The city's unpaid tab for lost parking meter revenue now tops $61 million as Emanuel disputes bills the company has sent. It’s unclear how much the city will be able to knock off that total.
Some aldermen, stung by constituents’ criticism of their overwhelming support of the meter lease barely two days after Daley handed them the proposal, have called on Emanuel to give them more time to consider far-reaching deals. Still, Emanuel’s digital billboard agreement quickly sailed through the council 43-6 this month despite opponents drawing comparisons to the parking meter deal.
Most parking meters in Chicago neighborhoods cost 25 cents an hour after the City Council approved the meter lease by a 40-5 vote in December 2008.
Neighborhood meters went up to $1 an hour in January 2009 and have increased each year since, along with those downtown.
jebyrne@tribune.com
Twitter @_johnbyrne
Chicago parking meter rates to rise again in 2013
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