Editorialists at the Boston Globe are skeptical of the plan — for rather vague reasons of "fairness" — but here’s a neat way that private, innovative entrepreneurship might cause scarce parking spaces in Boston to be used more efficiently.
Although the details differ enormously, this idea reminds me of Fred McChesney’s article on parking spaces in snow-bound Chicago. In both cases, as a valuable commodity (parking spaces) becomes more scarce, private efforts and coordination develop ways of creating private property rights in goods that otherwise would remain free-access goods.
