In the UK, councils often raise parking costs for high street on-street parking and car parks they own. Customers then vote with their feet (or wheels) and shop at out of town mega-supermarkets where the parking is free.
The councils then complain that their high street is dying.
How many customers does a street parking outside a business really provide? 1 customer an hour? And how many will park there and go somewhere else not even visiting the store with the curb parking?
Cars don't visit shops, people do. From the amount of visitors a store in a street sees, vanishingly little of them comes from the few parking spots outside. Metro, buses, cycling however brings loads.
Personally I avoid the shopping streets with car traffic. Feels hostile and noisy. I go to the shops in pedestrian areas.
It all comes down to local demographics. In many car centric areas, car drivers make up maybe 85% or higher of the workforce. And of that 15% of the workforce that doesn't get around via a car, they might be making something close to the federal poverty line. In other words, for some of these downtown businesses if you make it unattractive for drivers, you really do dry them out and force them out of business. The guy making $15k a year riding the bus isn't interested in your $15 sandwich for lunch. You are gone and whats going to appear in your wake is probably a place where someone making $15k a year could afford for a couple dollar lunch, probably something like a 7/11 or a mcdonalds.
In other places, people who use transit or bike around on average might be much higher income and could support different sort of businesses.
In my UK village, which has plenty of free off street parking 2 minutes walk from the high street, people will park on the street outside the shops even if it means interfering with traffic or parking on the pavement. People really hate to walk.
Councils do tend to be pretty conservative at raising prices and seem to get it right in my experience
My village is just about to introduce paid parking and I don't predict it'll lead to empty car parks. It just means those who don't want to pay will park further out and walk. Plenty of people willing to pay. Similar story all over the UK
People like to blame car parking on the death of the high street but to me it seems online shopping, rents and business rates are far more contributors to it
That's just a roundabout wealth transfer from local business owners to the government.
Kinda funny how the council is behaving like a medieval lord raising taxes but without the ability to tie people to the land it doesn't work all that well.
In the town where I sometimes live, Harpenden, England, which has had free parking since cars were invented, there is currently a battle going on between the council that wants to introduce parking charges and the residents who don't want it. It's almost entirely about more money for the council.
The councils then complain that their high street is dying.