Up until maybe ten or fifteen years ago, in the place where I live, we still had parking meters. They took coins, too, and although the price of parking kept going up, it wasn’t too high. They even took pennies, which got you about a minute, or nickels or dimes, although they also gobbled up quarters quite nicely. If you were extra-lucky and someone had just vacated a space for which they’d bought too much time, you could coast on their extra time if you were doing a quick errand.
There were even places to park, not too far from the main streets, where there were no meters, although the parking was timed. You could park for two hours there for free, if I remember correctly.
Yes, you needed to keep coins on hand. But that wasn’t too difficult because as I said, parking wasn’t mega-expensive.
Then they removed the meters and put in parking stations – is that what they’re called? or kiosks? – where you bought a ticket that you then put in the windshield. At first it wasn’t too bad, although in the snow and sleet and rain it meant a rather nasty trip to the station and sometimes standing in line while the person in front of you paid. The stations took coins or credit cards, and with the coins you could get just a few minutes if that was all you needed.
It occurred to me early on that this had the advantage to the city of parking being non-transferable. No longer could you get the benefit of a person who’d overpaid in your spot. The fee for each person was tied to that person, and so the city got the money even if the time was unused.
Then at some point the parker had to plug into the machine the numbers of a license plate, just to make the fee extra-nontransferable.
And today, when I ran an errand in town and parked, the coin slot at the station was inoperable although it was still there. I think it’s now all credit cards, all the time. This means the shortest segment of parking you can buy has become an hour, which I rarely need and which costs a fair amount.
And then there’s the reading of the messages in the machine. If light is bright and there’s a lot of reflection, faggetaboutity you’ll have to create artificial shade to read it. And please, be quick about typing stuff in, because the machine is impatient and quite quick to say you’ve run out of time and need to start again. Today, for example, there was no diagram to tell me which way to insert my credit card. I tried every way I could think of and it rejected the card and timed out. Today I think I went through the entire protocol about four times before the machine finally had mercy on me and spit the parking permit out – and there, in the slot, I also found the permits of two previous people who’d left them there. They had their license plates on them, so I couldn’t have used them even if I’d known they were there.
Or, I suppose I could get the app. But I park in town so seldom – usually just when on official business – that I tend to forget about dong that until next time. And what guarantee would there be that the app would be any easier to use? None.
Okay, I feel better now.