Costs of Privatization Hidden in Plain Sight

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Costs of Privatization Hidden in Plain Sight

Tuesday, 28 January 2014 09:57
By Ellen Dannin, Truthout | News Analysis


Privatization is often sold as providing higher quality services and infrastructure at lower cost. In fact, important costs are regularly overlooked. In other words, services and infrastructure have been privatized, even though keeping them public is the better choice.

Chicago Privatization and its Costs

Chicago's experiences with privatization make a textbook case for not deciding to privatize without carefully identifying costs. By failing to do so, Chicago has found itself locked into bad deals that will last for three to four generations.

Consider Chicago's Parking Meter deal. It was approved after the aldermen were given two days only to digest the 686-page document. They voted overwhelmingly for the deal because they believed they had no alternative means to pay for basic city needs.

According to the Huffington Post, a 2009 study by Chicago's Active Transportation Alliance found:

. . . that every potential project on a street with meters, including bus rapid transit, bicycle lanes, sidewalk expansion, streetscaping, pedestrian bulb-outs, loading zones, rush hour parking control, mid-block crossing and temporary open spaces are dictated, controlled and limited by parking meters," the report reads. "These restrictions severely limit innovative planning for bicyclists, pedestrian and transit users."

In other words, anything that promoted less driving and, more important, less parking at parking meters owned by the private contractor, would cost the city money. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21466-costs-of-privatization-hidden-in-plain-sight