Put Expensive Parking Meters on Some Handicapped Parking Spaces

Most of the money goes to help the handicapped. Perhaps a dollar a minute. Perhaps only a portion of them. Perhaps only at certain times.

Everyone surely notices that on off peak hours, the handicapped parking spaces at large parking lots (usually the best ones) are at least 80% empty. People rarely complain about that, except perhaps during bad weather, because it’s no big deal and no one wants to suggest something that has even a slight chance of causing any problem for disabled people. For instance, the suggestion to make perhaps half those spaces regular parking spaces during those off hours, seems wrong, since the benefit to able bodied is tiny and it has a risk, small as it is, of inconveniencing someone who is handicapped. But what if there was some benefit? I can think of two ways to do that. One would be to make these “dual” spaces available on off hours to people with small problems that don’t normally make the handicapped threshold. Maybe automatically include those over 70 years old. Secondly why not try to make money off those empty spaces? Especially if a large chunk of that money goes to help handicapped people in some way. My recommendation would be to make the charge quite high because I think it is an inelastic demand curve at least up to about a dollar a minute, paid to a parking meter. Or alternatively charge people an annual fee to have a sticker in their car entitling them to use the dual spaces at the specified times. Poor people may be slightly irritated by this scheme since they can’t use it. But the charitable aspect would allay most of that irritation. Same with the handicapped driver who, once a year has to wait a few minutes for a space.