I hate parking pay stations
How about you?
Yes, they do away with the need to always have gobs of change on hand. Big deal. What they offer in that particular convenience they more than take away in the many other annoyances they provide.
How fun to have to hike to one in a storm, and then hike back to the car in order to place the little piece of paper on the dashboard. Even worse is when—as so often happens in New England—there are huge mounds of snow to traverse in order to even get near them.
Sometimes you have to wait in line to use one. That’s great, too. And then try to figure out how to work it, because they’re all just a wee bit different. Some of my favorites manage to trick you into buying more time than you want, if you’re not wary.
Progress.
I seem to recall having been in a city or two where they have individual parking meters into which one can insert a credit card or use cash. Now, that seems like progress. Choice and convenience.
The ones we have here in my town don’t have little pieces of paper you have to put in the window. You enter your license plate number and that’s all it requires. You don’t even enter a space number. It’s fairly intuitive to go through the process. You still have the disadvantage of having to hike over to the machine, but you don’t have to go back to your car.
On the other hand, the ones in the big city downtown have all the disadvantages and none of the advantages. They use a multi-step, non-intuitive process that’s aggravating and is very easy to add extra time to but impossible to take time back if you overdo it. You have to start over completely from scratch. Every time you go to the next step it requires a different button. Bad design.
Bonus for us: No snow banks.
I place parking meters in the same category that my father places taxes upon toilet paper. I remember back in the 60s my father saying that he knew this country was going “to hell in a hand basket” when they started taxing you to wipe your ass.
The pay stations on city streets represent a change in thinking. Parking meters were initially installed to keep people from monopolizing street parking thus turning over the clientele for local merchants; i.e., as a benefit to the local merchants. Now the municipality sees parking as a fee generating program. For example, with these pay stations one can no longer find a meter with time remaining on it. In fact, people are now essentially forced to drive away with the time that they paid for still remaining and the next person comes along and pays again. Furthermore, if you use a credit card there is usually a minimum purchase which is often the cost of more time than one needs.
GB,
“taxes upon toilet paper”
In states with sales taxes, SCUBA divers pay tax on the very air that they breath when they have their tank filled at a dive shop.
Most of LA and most of Beverly Hills are like that.
i detest these things for many reasons.
I just spent many weeks in Minneapolis which is overrun with them. On a particularly freezing day, I was happy to find a parking spot in a popular part of town. Walked a block to get to the pay station, but it was out of order. Had to walk 3 blocks to find another, which had a very long line thanks to the broken station. Took over 10 minutes in 20 below to pay.
A second thing I dislike about the new meters is the ability for the city to vary rates any time they feel like it. During the holidays, I never knew when they would hit me with “Special Event Parking” rates, which would be 4-5 times higher than usual.
What qualifies as a special event? Oh, anything really.
Just an opportunity to take your money.
We have to get back to Cool Hand Luke times when dealing with parking meters.
Hmm, my commuter bus parking lot is looking rather good. Just note the number of your spot, walk up to the rows of little yellow boxes near the bus depot and slide two dollars or coins into the box with your parking spot’s number.
You’re walking that way anyway to catch the bus. It is just first timers who don’t know to get their spot’s number who have to walk back to their car.
The parking enforcement come around sometime. I’ve never seen them; so it must be during the day, and give tickets to the cars whose little yellow box is empty.
A rather simple system; it doesn’t break down and is under the outside roof of the bus depot so snow, rain, etc. isn’t a problem. The only downside is there are no receipts.
Some of my favorites manage to trick you into buying more time than you want, if you’re not wary.
Cmon, Neo. That pictured pay machine has a phone number you can call to report problems. I’m absolutely certain they will promptly and cheerfully refund all such overcharges, and quickly fix malfunctioning machines. Yeah.
even better when they are solar powered and they have not had enough sun due to rain, clouds, snow, dirt… then you cant get a ticket, and the judge takes your money
but… this is socialism at work…
a committee (Soviet) decided to make rules as they are not allowed tomake laws… and so impose what they want… from housing price controls, zoning, etc.
heck… they USED to have to change the law to change the price of the meter, but they now just change it without changing law… they have commitee power (used to be called soviet power)
a commitee is a soviet…
so they create hundreds of commitees and delegate power
but since no one wants to know that…
we just ignore what we dont want to accept.
now… will the idea of a committee raise concern like it should? nope… because pavlov trained people not to pay attention to sovietisms… which is convenient as it prevents the hogs from learning how not to be caught.
T: I have more than once seen someone angling for my space as I walk to my car; I usually just give them my slip of paper. They always thank me, even if there isn’t that much time left. Good will on the roads is a precious thing.
In Brookline, the slips of paper were once not linked to a particular space. So I could (and did) pay, drive to a different parking space for a second errand, and make use of the same slip without paying again. But I can’t do that anymore; now the system expects you to say exactly which space you’re paying for. Shucks and other comments.
On the other hand, the slips make excellent bookmarks…
A few years back, our city meters were switched to the type described by kcom. You enter your license plate number and either coins or credit card to cover the time you need. No need to return to your car to put a receipt on your dash.
I must admit that I found the system irritating and non-intuitive at first. I could never recall the license plate number (or remember to check before I left the car). Now that I am used to it, I suppose it’s inoffensive but I am still generally scrounging for quarters.
Thanks to the anonymity of the internet, I would like to ask a question I would feel stupid asking in person. Can someone explain how this works exactly? Since there are no receipts required, how do the “meter maids” track whether or not your car is paid up? Inquiring minds want to know.
Yesterday I was house hunting in a town, and saw a few I liked, went to the main street to get lunch and soak up the town’s vibe. Tried to park at the town public parking lot using one of those parking meters. It didn’t work. I stood there for ten minutes. Then decided to just go home, and not buy a house in that town because I was so irritated.
CV wrote:
Can someone explain how this works exactly? Since there are no receipts required, how do the “meter maids” track whether or not your car is paid up? Inquiring minds want to know.
I don’t know exactly, but it probably works something like this:
1) You go to the station, enter your license number and pay for 2 hours (eg from 1:37pm to 3:37pm). The machine has a computer in it that records all this information.
2) At 2:45pm, the lot attendant comes around to check your parking spot.
3) The attendant has some special hand-held gizmo (like a tablet computer), equipped with with WiFi or some other radio capabilities with which to communicate to the station machine.
4) He enters the license plate number. It is sent to the station machine, which sends back the information, if any, it has for that license.
5) The information is displayed on the tablet (eg license NY AX7-142 paid from 1:37pm – 3:37pm). Since it’s only 2:45pm, the attendant knows the car is OK. If it had been 3:45pm, the car would be ticketed.
——————
BTW, two things I don’t like about this system. Maybe I’m paranoid, but I don’t like them recording where my car is at various times (many cities have cameras scattered around that read license plates and store this info). Also, if you don’t get a receipt, how can you prove that you were incorrectly ticketed at a time you’ve paid for?
One time I was standing at the pay station, waiting for it to process my card, when I looked up and noticed a hyper-diligent meter man writing me a ticket. My car was no more than 5 spaces from the pay station. I’m normally a pretty mild mannered guy, but something just welled up in me and burst forth. He was embarrassed and apologetic. I didn’t feel too sorry for him. Still makes my blood boil.
Thanks Gary, that makes sense. Still seems like more work for the meter checker, since they basically have to check every plate instead of looking for a flag on a meter. In our system you park anywhere on the block (no defined or numbered spaces) and enter plate number/pay at a single pay station.
And even thought the receipt is optional, I still feel compelled to take it in case I later have to fight city hall. Don’t trust the system!