Chicago’s parking meters seem to be a hot topic in a most unlikely of places–sunny Los Angeles, California.

No, it’s not in stunned awe on how wonderful the meter lease deal has been for Chicago and it’s constituents.

Unsurprisingly, the debacle that is Chicago’s parking meter lease deal has seemingly become the legendary cautionary tale on how NOT to do a privatization deal and especially not how to sell off a specialty public asset like a parking meter system.

Chicago’s epic failure in parking privatization has been the model to avoid by cities like Pittsburgh, Indianapolis and even New York City. While Pittsburgh voted down meter privatization, Indianapolis moved ahead but seemed to avoid every pitfall and mistake the Windy City made. New York seems to be moving slowly toward discussing the idea but have looked to Chicago as the opposite of how it should be done.

But now it’s LA’s turn.

As pointed out by Chicago Magazine, Los Angeles’ new ExpressPark program is slated to debut this spring where the city will experiment with a radical market based street parking pay system where meter rates can be adjusted in close to real time and range anywhere from 50 cents to $6 per hour.

Instead of selling off their meters, LA is taking 6000 prime downtown metered space and using in-pavement sensors and a lot of cutting edge computer technology to hopefully ease congestion, optimize meter income and make parking better for all LA drivers.

Chicago Magazine collects all the different pundits sharing their thoughts and views on the program, and every one of them cites Chicago’s meter lease deal as the failure that it is.

Here’s the piece, “Chicago’s Parking Meter Debacle: Back in the News.”