Then aside from theories of corrupt decision making, why wouldn’t every city or parking provider choose the $0 option? (Particularly city governments with a responsibility to their residents.)
A city council member trying to balance a budget isn't engaging in corruption by choosing the option that reduces an expense in the city budget, even if it just places the cost on the people paying for parking instead. Constituents would be more likely to complain about higher property taxes or cuts to city services than to complain about a fee like this.
Maybe they just got bribed, but that seems less likely.
I've lived in a lot of places.
In most places electeds usually have some conception of a sort of broadly construed responsibility is to residents.
But in larger cities it's a responsibility to voters and voting blocs, not residents per se. And this is particularly true in older east coast cities.
But what would be nice is being able to preload a balance and get hit with the fee only once.
This is an area where I’m hoping AI will cause total disruption. There’s no reason for all these apps to exist. A high school kid with AI coding could build a perfectly functional app in an afternoon and keep more money in local communities. These parking app companies need to just go away.
You have to figure city council who approved this are either idiots or getting bribes.
Or, like I've had to deal with twice this month — the parking space is underground, so the app doesn't work until you get to the surface.
Also annoying: I had to stop using the iPhone Lockdown mode because the parking apps I have to use break when it's enabled.
Here in Chicago it's extremely annoying because you can pay physically at the meter with a credit card and not get hit with these junk fees, but if you use their app, you have to pay the fee, and extending the time hits you with the fee again. The app is a piece of garbage that hasn't been meaningfully updated in years and it's not like maintaining the physical meter is free either. Plus when you use the app they require you to load a minimum $20 balance into it so all the Abu Dhabi princes who own our public infrastructure get to make interest on that hostage money. When I street park I make it a point to pay at the meter with my most expensive Amex.