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Canadian Bureaucrats Don't "Think Different"
owlgorithm writes "Apple's new store in Montreal has three parking meters on the street in front of it. The city is in the middle of a campaign to reduce downtown parking. In Apple's ever-conscientious attempt to improve design, they offered to reimburse the city for the parking meters and their revenue if the city would remove them. Answer: Non — because 'We've never done it before, so we can't.'"
The meters are there to reduce the number of parked cars, not for revenue. Apple is offering money, not a solution to overcrowded streets.
And this is a story how? Why should a city remove meters because the business is Apple. If Apple doesn't want to deal with the meters they shouldn't have put the store there.
The quote "We've never done it before, so we can't." isn't attributed to anyone in the article, I highly doubt it was ever said. Sounds to me like the writer injecting some op-ed in to this supposed news piece. Should it really be cited on /.'s front page in a way that makes it sound like that was an actual reason given?
That "news" story isn't quoting Montreal bureaucrats. It's putting words in their mouths to make a (stupid) point. All the writer knows is that the city refused - they don't actually know why, and there's no sign they actually asked anyone.
Parking meters, as the writer did note, are designed not to collect a little revenue, but to keep parking turning over quickly so more people can share fewer parking spots. "No Parking" signs don't replace them where they're needed (like in front of stores like Apple's) because parking is appropriate there, just not unlimited.
This is a stupid story by a stupid writer. Published by a stupid Slashdot editor.
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make install -not war
Feeding meters like that is illegal in many areas.
If the meters are to reduce the number of parked cars....how does that work exactly? The number of spaces doesn't change when you add a meter.
If they want to really reduce the number of parked cars they would allow Apple to remove the meters and make them put bike racks in place of the car parking spots.
You're missing the point. Apple's objection is not that people have to pay for parking. Apple's objection is that the physical presence of parking metres screws up the design of their store.
It is ironic that they very objectives that municipalities set for programs of Smart Growth very often result in precisely the opposite effects, increasing or exacerbating the undesirable elements that they seek to control. For example, in Portland Oregon they have filled in left turn pockets with planter boxes, installed "speed tables" and other "traffic calming" obstacle courses (if you were in a hurry would you be happy about having to slow down to navigate an obstacle course in your vehicle? Would that make you calmer once you exited the course or would you romp on the gas in anger and frustration to make up for lost time as you entered the freeway or the main traffic corridor?), removed parking spaces, provided too few parking spaces, and done many other misguided things in pursuit of the goal of "getting people out of their cars". After 15+ years what has been the result of these policies? Snarled traffic, increased traffic, traffic idling in slow speed stop and go driving, increased smog from more vehicles operating in the most inefficient speed and rpm range for the internal combustion engine. Basically every problem that they hopped to solve with their "Smart Growth" has in fact been made worse or even created new problems (i.e. dramatically increased smog) on top of the old ones. Portland is *worse* off because of Smart Growth and it would have been better off if they simply done nothing or at least abstained from some of the more no sense recommendations of the "Smart Growth" activists and consultants.
It all boils down to basic economics. People will do what they want and live how they want and you cannot tell them, "The elite smart growth planners are going to tell you what it is that you *really* want (i.e. less parking) and then enforce it upon you against your will." That type of centrally planned, command and control economic or social policy has not worked and will never work. It is the height of hubris and arrogance to presume that you can change other people's lives and preferences through mandates, laws, and enforcement actions. If people cannot work within the system then they find ways around it and the economic results of the workarounds are often *highly* suboptimal resulting in a Dead Weight Loss to the economy.
There's the matter of cars taking up the spots all day, unless it's posted Car Park limit 1 Hour, also having a parking warden come along and chalk tyres and monitor vehicles where the old meter was simply expired or not. (Though were I live they keep a limit of two hours on a vehicle in the same spot, meter paid up or no.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"We've never done it before, so we can't."
There is no source for the quote in TFA, and TFA is the only article I can find on the subject with the quote. I believe this is what we call "hyperbole."
Now why wouldn't the city want to play ball? As TFA and the summary say, the entire point of the parking meters is to reduce downtown parking to begin with; it's not about the revenue, it's about the traffic (always a problem in major metropolitan centers built well before the invention of the automobile). If anything, we should be applauding the local government here for not taking the money and instead sticking by their original intent. All too many such governments would have taken the money and turned the other way.
If anybody is failing to "think different," it's Apple themselves, who are trying to take the tried-and-true easy way out of essentially bribing a government to get their way. Something different would be to find a way to encourage all those hipster Apple fans to come to their store by, say, public transportation (save gas, ease traffic congestion, etc.).
Would the story have the same "Boo government, yay capitalists!" slant if we were talking about a Sony store?
I think of these things any time a libertarian says, "Business can do things more efficiently!"
In defense of libertarians: the nice thing about business is that they go out of business (i.e. bankruptcy) whereas governments are much harder to get rid off once they are entrenched into an inefficient position (i.e. governments cannot go bankrupt, at lest not in the traditional sense that the entity is dissolved). Businesses come and go and that is fine as the market weeds out the less efficient players, but governments are always there and can be very difficult to remove or replace once they get into a spending program funded by taxes and backed up by police power to collect.
If the city officials allow Apple to do this, then they must allow other companies to do this as well. So, imagine if a significant number of companies pay for this "privilege", and the number of street-parking slots is reduced by 50% (or whatever fraction you deem to be significant), can you see the problem this would cause?
Stupid article and stupid writer.
It would be nice if they could demonstrate that other cities have accepted such an offer - keep in mind that the Gazette is Montréal's leading English language, right-leaning paper. The sense that they are also delivering a slight poke to the French spoken city officials is unmistakable.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
My sense is just the opposite: that the biggest and longest lived companies waste the most, not the least (AT&T, IBM, Raytheon, etc). Less efficient businesses do not go out of business, rather, entrenched businesses have the luxury of being less efficient. Bigger (usually as a result of having succeeded over a longer period of time), longer-lived companies usually have lower profit margins than smaller ones, and make it up in volume. Their momentum (experience, contracts, brand name, lobbying efforts, diversification) is what keeps them going, not their efficiency.
Every once in a while one of those thousand companies doesn't fail, and then you have your Apple, your Microsoft, your Ford, etc.
Everyone has a different definition of efficient because everyone has a different cost structure.
You can't "kill" an inefficient government short of staging a coup and killing people.
You can "kill" an inefficient company by creating a MORE efficient company.
GPL Deconstructed
bah, unless your off the grid your power is the same as everyone else's. It's a interconnected grid, if you remove your PC's their not going to turn down that hydro plant first, their going to turn down the plants with the highest incremental cost, which is probably a natural gas turbine plant (maybe in Pennsylvania.) IE any excess power in your area will be pushed to the next city over, etc, etc to a high cost producer.
kudos to your Tax dollars for producing a good source, but your power is just as dirty/clean as everyone else's, turn down that usage.
Transmission losses mean that even with wheeling, the power from my neck of the woods never reaches the East Coast. You can look on my local utility's distribution page and see where the power goes (much to north california and seattle)
Not to mention paying the city for lost revenue due to meter removal isn't meeting the goal of the meters. The point, according to the article, is to reduce downtown parking. The purpose of the meter is to disincentivize people from parking, not to make money.
Apple doesn't want to remove the parking meters so their customers can park for free. They want to remove the meters so that no one can park in front of their store at all! They want to turn the three spots into a no-parking zone and offered to reimburse the city for the revenue lost by the three spots, while simultaneously helping with the city's goal of fewer parked cars downtown.
Well, as a Montrealer, I'll have to say that the city is being just freaking idiotic about downtown parking. From removing meters to replacing them with those station monstrosities, to changing the hours of operation to cover non-business hours (9 AM to 9 PM Mon-Fri), to killing legitimate businesses owning parking lots by denying them the right to operate in the downtown area, and then increasing parking rates continuously... The current plan to replace parking spots with bike lanes only makes sense if:
1. The city can support bicycles year 'round, instead of only having 5-7 months of bicycle-capable weather
2. There is sufficient parking during winter months (nevermind the mega-city incompetance resulting in the snow-removal contracts which leave snow in parking areas for days at a time).
If you work downtown - but don't live close to a metro (subway) - or train stop - you're f***ed.
To be fair, Quebec and Montreal gov't bureaucracy is narrow-mindend and limited beyond the scope of what is normally accepted for those mentalitites (hell - look at the idiocy for what's going on with St. Laurent Blvd. - different companies working on projects spanning over a year - every one rips the road up, does their sh**, and replaces the road, before the next company takes over and does the same thing). I know several businesses which have closed up simply because of this idiocy.
Just to work I pay in the order of $500 in parking tickets, as it is - because 2 minutes late = parking ticket, and conference calls are seldom forgiving. I don't see any road improvements - we have third-world quality roads.
So the article, although an editorial, really does ring true.
If Apple can pay for those spots fulltime, let them.
As a Canadian I find this article and half the comments about it kind of offensive.
... well let's just say it is "unique" and quite different from the rest of Canada so you are tarring all of Canada with a brush that should be meant only for a small minority. It's also offensively implies that "Canada is doing something wrong here" or that we are unimaginative, backward etc. when in fact the reverse is the case.
In the first place this is Quebec, which is
The fact that a company could not bribe a municipal government to go against it's own bylaws and provide special treatment to a high-end retail establishment is something to celebrate, not berate.
I am a big Apple fan, but this is really a kind of outrageous request. If this kind of stuff is common in the United States, well then I feel sorry for you. Horay for any government that is above the petty manipulations of the business community I say.
Lastly, as others have mentioned, how much more of a boring non-story could there be?
I do my grocery shopping for my family of 5 by bike, but I live in bike-friendly Sweden.
People need to park in order to buy.
No they don't. In real cities, people don't need cars at all (I don't know for sure whether Montreal is a real city, but from what I hear, it's not too bad).
Apple is clearly a bit confused by this concept (being headquartered in Cupertino, I suppose it's understandable).
Sorry folks but the answer is building green cars not in banning parking spaces.
No. The fundamental problem with cars is that they suck up space, and "green cars" do absolutely nothing to address that.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
I do my grocery shopping for my family of 5 by bike, but I live in bike-friendly Sweden.
It must also be "lower-gravity Sweden" or you do your grocery shopping at least 5 times a week. I also have a family of 5 and every week we fill the trunk of a hatchback Renault Clio. But I live in bike-unfriendly Brazil and I also live 18 km from the nearest decent supermarket.
So say we all
For once I will not read all 296 answers before writing mine, so sory for the repeat. This is yesterdays new anyway.
The story made the news here on TV. Apple says (fake numbers) "Since you make an average of 6000$ per parking meter in a year, we will pay you for all parking in the area, and remove the meters".
This does not make sense for 2 main reasons:
1) The city makes a lot more money with parking tickets, than your "average 8 hour a day at 2$ per hour" meter.
2) The meters are there to insure "movement"; 5 or 10 potential customers circulate in the area for ALL stores in a wide area to profit from. Apple Free Parking would simply be filled with workers of the area parking from morning to midnight. Or should the city also pay for some sort of time limit validation system?
3) Private parking businesses make a lot of money with parking too, mostly daily workers. As much as I hate them (they are almost criminals) this would affect their business.
If apple wants more parking, do like other businesses, make a deal with a local private parking and validate their tickets. BTY parking ticket validation is NOT something very common here. There is a lot of free parking (pure chance to get one) and private parking makes you pay on entry, good luck to get any money back if you return before the max time.
What they SHOULD have asked, is to ask for the meters to be replaced by "Maximum 1 hour parking" signs, like at numerous other places in the city.