Pay to park

The city of Portland is one of the many victims of the current economic crisis, and Oregon has been hit especially hard. In the face of a budget deficit of nearly $1 billion, the city is scrambling to come up with as much revenue as possible. Recently, the city has turned to the issue of parking downtown.

The revenue collected from parking in Portland is about $10 million annually, and the proposed 25-cent increase will, hopefully, help add to that revenue. Other proposed changes have been to extend paid parking hours from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., or extend paid parking to Sundays. Though both ideas have merit, I believe that extending parking to Sundays is the logical and fair choice.

Prolonging payment hours to 9 p.m. would unfairly impact the nighttime crowd and affect the revenue of downtown restaurants and bars. It would also effectively shorten business hours in a way, as many people will wait longer to come downtown to shop, go to the gym, etc. Though the revenue from these hours would arguably be helpful and lucrative, the negative effect on downtown business would be very much the opposite.

However, lengthening parking to Sundays would affect businesses just like any other day of the week and would not largely upset how things usually work downtown. Except, of course, for the church-going crowd.

The Sunday parking hours would only be from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., and would affect most groups and businesses equally. The problem here is that the hours are not long enough. The extension of paid parking by two hours the rest of the week would have netted a lucrative 12 hours of time. If the reason is to increase revenue, a six-hour stint of paid parking downtown is not going to have a large effect.

The main, perhaps only, reason that the parking hours on Sunday would not start until 1 p.m. is so it would not largely affect those who go downtown for church on Sunday mornings. It seems unfair that one group should be singled out to be exempt from parking fees. What about Muslims or those of the Jewish faith who worship on Friday?

If one were required to go downtown to buy groceries once a week they would certainly not be allowed to flaunt the $1.50 required to park downtown that everyone else pays.

Sam Adams and the city are playing it safe, in turn making a lucrative and fair idea into one that seems more like too little too late. Those who make the choice to go downtown for any reason should be contributing to the infrastructure contained therein. If it’s not worth the $3 to worship downtown, then perhaps other arrangements should be made.