and pay the meter, the payment doesn’t go to the city like most American cities. Instead, a company partly owned by foreign investors is pocketing the revenue. Strapped for cash, then-Mayor Richard M. Daley began to think of ways for the city to privatize its assets. The seven-term mayor attempted to sell Midway International Airport in September 2008 in what would have been the first commercial airport in the United States to become privatized.
Before 2008, parking in Chicago cost 25 cents per hour for many decades. By 2009, rates had quadrupled to $1 per hour and have only increased since, with some street parking in downtown Chicago costing up to $7 per hour. As of 2023, 80% of Chicago’s parking meters cost $2.50. “CPM has obtained an unlawful monopoly for an unreasonable 75-year period over the lease of parking spaces in a fixed number and at fixed rates and without active regulation by the City, without regard to consumer preferences for alternative forms of transportation,” the