From the BBC
Councils are making record surpluses from parking charges and fines, according to the RAC Foundation.
In 2012-13 local authorities in England made a "profit" of £594m from parking activities, the organisation said.
Seven of the 10 greatest surpluses were in London - including all the top four. The largest was £39.7m in Westminster.
This is exactly what should be happening. The point of car parking is rationing, and in higher land value areas, you're going to charge more. Considering how automated parking is and the running costs, there should be an excess in London.
If you look at the list on the BBC article, at least 8 of the 10 are in high land value areas: 7 in London + Brighton. I'm not sure what the situation is with Manchester and Nottingham, but these are basically councils renting out land to the higher bidders, effectively. People are going to bid more in London and Brighton than Wolverhampton.
Now, let's imagine that Westminster made no profit on parking and it did this by lowering charges. At this point, you aren't now prioritising parking on who will pay the most to rent a space, which is arguably about the best form of rationing, but on who gets out of bed first in the morning.And of course, as you've lowered the cost, they'll probably stay in the parking space longer, sipping a latte in Starbucks for longer, rather than getting out and going home and freeing up the space for someone else to use. That's a less functional system than what happens now.
And the excess goes to the council, and that council spends it on local people, who are also people who have paid for the privilege of living near certain locations that parkers are enjoying, so someone traveling in should also pay those costs that then (via the council) go back to the residents. When I went to the Bath Literature Festival, I paid for parking to go to a festival that the council tax payers of Bath had subsidised. Seems only fair to me that those council tax payers should collect any excess parking charge from outsiders that arises from a service that they've paid for.
It's not quite an LVT system, as the price is variable, and there's a benefit with town center or tourist parking in getting people to get a move on (which is why the prices start to rise after 2 hours). But it's not far off, and it works.
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