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"Smart" Parking Meters Considered Dumb
theodp writes "The jury's still out on whether Chicago taxpayers were taken to the cleaners by a rushed 75-year lease of the city's metered parking to a Morgan Stanley consortium. But most would probably agree that the new shared Pay Boxes that replaced the city's old parking meters don't exactly live up to their 'Smart' billing. Here's what the redesigned 'user-friendly' parking solution looks like: 1. Park your car. 2. Walk up to 1/2 block to a Pay Box. 3. Wait in line to use it. 4. Use coins or credit cards to purchase parking time — up to $84 for 24-hours (add $50 if you run out of time). 5. Wait for a paper receipt to be printed. 6. Walk up to 1/2 block back to your car. 7. Place the receipt on your dashboard. 8. Head off to your destination, perhaps passing the Pay Box a second time. So before other cities suffer the same fate as Chicago, Portland, and others, is there a 'smarter' way? Some suggest the ParkMagic In-Car Meter, but no new orders are being taken in Chicago. Any other ideas?"
If only there was some sort of token people could use to activate the meters... But it would have to be something almost everyone carries. Hmmm...
Then have the customer enter the spot number they parked in at the pay box. No return trip, no silly paper receipt to put on the dash board, no worries. Was that so hard?
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What happens if parking enforcement comes around while you're in the middle of the walk-wait-pay-walk process?
Ask anyone in Chicago who isn't on Daley's payroll, and they can tell you that the jury is not out on the parking meters: Daley, once again, did whatever the fuck he wanted and the residents, once again, were screwed over.
The parking meters described are user hostile to the population of Chicago. However, they do a much better job of keeping the life of the organization that bought them and runs them easy than having to physically collect coins from so many different parking meters.
The government is not the people.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
The system isn't made to be fair. It's made to generate revenue. If more revenue can be generated by making you walk half of a block, hell, even an entire block, why not two, then it's going to be that way. The city has no vested interest in making things easier for its inhabitants if making things easier nets them less revenue.
Especially when you throw in a kickback or bribe to certain members that have the power to vote on these things...
It's all about corruption. Why replace perfectly good parking meters with a convoluted new system that will ensure that people get fined or at least ripped off on the price? Because it generates more money. Not because it's safer, or an improvement, or healthier, etc.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
They make me furious! Okay, so the buttons are not well labeled, because these things sit in the sun all day and of course, the stickers, and the LCD screen will fade/lose intensity and become unreadable. Well, there is a button next to the add-time button that is 'add maximum time'. Okay, so what if you accidentally press that (which I've done) and cant see the dollar amount it tells you, it just says 'REMOVE CARD' and you have to remove your credit card to get it back, so when you remove it, it swipes, and boom, the transaction goes through for the maximum amount of time possible! So, yes I could have avoided it had I 1) not pressed the wrong button 2) been able to see the screen 3)known what happened and pressed the cancel button - BUT NONE of those happened and instead I paid more than I've ever paid for parking - including in a garage. Great engineering their folks.
The ParkMagic in-car meter is a scam on the part of the city to steal your paid-for parking time from you. (To be fair, the new smart meters a half a block away from you are probably a scam too). It used to be that if you had extra time on the meter, someone else could park there for the extra time and save themselves money. Considering that if someone else left with extra time you could park in their spot and take advantage of the free time, over the long run it would tend to average out that you were only paying for the actual time you spent parked in your spot.
Now with the new changes, nobody else can take advantage of leftover time on your meter when you leave, and you can't get any kind of refund. So all of the extra time that people pay for -- the city's getting their money for free.
Similar installations have been deployed where I live, and have already had one major benefit:
Fewer people are taking cars in to town.
Though I'm not sure the local retailers share my enthusiasm on that one.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The whole idea of a smart meter is (or should be) efficiency. It should be efficient for the municipality to collect fees, and it should be efficient for the user to use. That seems pretty self-evident to me. To that end, it is completely reasonable to expect a system that lets you pay electronically at the meter itself. Having to go out of your way an extra block, especially if you're planning on going the other direction, is completely unreasonable. And It has nothing to with fitness. It has everything to do with wasting time that you shouldn't have to spend to begin with. Smart meters should make the process better, not worse.
That only really works if parking is a nearly unlimited commodity. Unmetered parking when parking is scarce just leads to people circling forever, like New York City.
I mean, sure, no payment is always the most convenient option, because you don't have to deal with payment. You could avoid the hassle of tokens or payment cards on a subway if subway rides were free, too.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Burbank is not Chicago. I haven't been to Burbank, but if it's an economical use of space in Burbank to put down free parking lots you can't even compare it to a real city (defined by density and layout -- Burbank is certainly a real place where people do real things, but it doesn't sound very urban) like Chicago. Parking meters are put on commercial streets because if they weren't people would park there indefinitely. The summary complains that it would cost $84 to park in some of these places for 24 hours. That's the point! To prevent people from doing that so that the street parking spots are open for convenient access to businesses and city buildings. You don't want parking across from City Hall or the main library downtown clogged with commuters, so use high per-hour rates to push them into parking garages. And you wouldn't want all the spots outside neighborhood cafés and restaurants occupied by residents, so you use meters to keep them on the residential streets (where, if there is a parking shortage, the landlords have an incentive to actually provide parking, which is somewhat rare in many older neighborhoods).
Probably because the real reader was pried out and replaced with a card skimmer :)
The whole point of meters was to encourage people to be quick and move on, freeing up parking so others can patronize the same businesses. That's why there are time limits and feeding the meter is illegal in many places, even if you own the car.
Perhaps instead it's time to rethink the whole concept of meters and find a better way to accomplish the task. Preferably one which leaves as few hazards in a too-narrow roadway as it is. Something like.. valet parking, satellite lots, underground parking (I understand this has been very successful in Boston, for instance), mass transit, etc.
It is clear to anyone with more sense than a turnip that individual transportation machines is not a solution that scales well. But it's tricky because it's not enough to have the bandwidth, a viable "public transportation" option needs to have equivalent or better latency, too.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Whining about walking half a block. No wonder that not only does everybody think Americans are fat and lazy but that we really are. Come on, it's just a few parking spots well within sight of your car. If you have trouble walking that far and back, you really have no business even leaving your assisted care facility that you must live in.
Anyway, Seattle has the same ones that Portland has and they're great. Get a sticker to put on your car that can be paid with a card if you don't have tons of change. Works for the time you buy anywhere in the city. I can buy one sticker and be good for an afternoon of running errands. If the meter by my car is broke, I can just walk to the next one and still pay. (Jesus, an around the corner walk must make it not worth leaving the house for TFA poster. I can only wonder how they always manage to get a parking spot in front of where they want to go.)
If I was to bitch about such things, it would be because in Seattle, now that they've replaced all the old parking meters (which were usually broken and misread the time time elapsed anyway), they've started putting them in all the places that used to be free parking. It's getting harder and harder to find a spot thats not metered. Since I live in the older part of town (Capitol Hill) near downtown, street parking near my apartment which was hard enough to come by in a neighborhood where lots of buildings predate the common use of the car is now disappearing all together.
Yep, that's why everybody was starving until the government took over food production. Those incompetent private companies can't handle anything. Thank goodness the government is here to protect us.
Hell, last time I went to a private store, those idiots weren't even charging for their parking lot. I'm not surprised they're fucking this up.
Yep, I've used Park Plus here in Calgary and I think it's great. It's convenient for first time users (walk to any Park Plus box, enter your license plate and leave). For more frequent users, the mobile version is even easier.
Being able to pay only for the parking time you need is fantastic.
æeee!
Wow.
It has everything to do with wasting time that you shouldn't have to spend to begin with.
Really? Your life is so busy that you can't waste the minute or so it takes to walk *half a block out of your way*?
Actually, it does. No wonder people in this country are such fat-asses. They complain about walking half a damn block and try to rationalize it as "wasting time". Buddy... enjoy your life. If you live your life by such a hectic schedule, it won't be the obesity that does you in, it will be your little ticker deciding it doesn't like all this stress you are putting on it and subsequently deciding to malfunction--aka a heart attack.
Sheesh. One half block.
Issuing speeding tickets is not a "service".
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
What if the meter reader/ticket issuer comes along while you are walking to pay and you return to your car to find a ticket on it?
How hard would it be to install a meter that takes coins in the old way, but also reads credit cards and EZ-Pass? Then give a discount for using the e-payment so the meters don't have to be emptied very often.
Though wouldn't it be a hoot to make payment mains/sewers to ship the coins to a central collection point?
It's not 'free time' The meter is still counting down, and just because someone else paid doesn't make it 'free time', except to you. The city is still getting paid for the time.
Now, if the city wants a way to be able to get paid for 12 hours of parking in an 8 hour stretch, ok, then the sensors can make you pay every time you enter the space. So they make the minimum time say 60 minutes in front of the dry cleaners and shops, and people come and go every 15-20 minutes, so the meter gets the hour minimum 2-3-4 times an hour. Nice.
But I don't live in Chicago, and never have, so I don't expect my city government to deliberately screw me at every opportunity.
We are learning a lot more about Chicago-style politics than I ever wanted to...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I wouldn't consider that to be free time, since somebody had to pay for it before you could benefit from it. It's not your problem if the guy before you overpaid, and there's no reason why you shouldn't benefit from it if you can. IMO, "Free" time would be putting quarter-sized sheet metal discs into a meter. (old machines would probably take it, not that I've tried or anything)
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
It seems that someone finally found a way to get lazy, fat ass Americans to actually walk ONE block per day once in a while... ;)
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I read this, and think, yet another reason to ride a bike. Takes longer, but I need the exercise anyway, and I can always find "parking". And to an engineering approximation, if you live in the US, you're not getting enough exercise, even if you're not (yet) a fat ass. I do understand your problem, that the delay is not under your control, but that's life in a car. If there's a traffic jam, what's your plan then?
Thank God that the government is turning over more of its functions to the private market.
Market? What market?
This is a 75-year lease. The government is turning over its functions to a private monopoly.
Why don't we just bring back the East India Company while we're at it?
There are also corn syrup, trans fat, saccharin, and all of the other things private sector food producers think are okay, regardless of the health problems they produce, because they put profits first. But yes, those free parking lots are nice.
1> I resent paying four times more for parking than I did last year. 2> I resent having to go out of my way to feed the new system, a couple months ago I didn't have to. 3> What garages friend? Those are mostly many miles away, down town. 4> And generally, any system put into place by Daley and his cronies is a sweetheart deal to rape the taxpayer. Fuck Richard Daley, his secret deals and his midnight bulldozers.
Just because I happen to have extra time in my day doesn't mean I want to spend it on somebody's badly-designed parking meter system. You can't defend a bad concept with 'but the exercise will do you good'. Maybe it will, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still a bad concept. The new system is less convenient for people than the old system, and considering the technical advantages available today compared to when the old system was designed, that is pretty sad.
"The summary complains that it would cost $84 to park in some of these places for 24 hours. That's the point! To prevent people from doing that so that the street parking spots are open for convenient access to businesses and city buildings."
Nah, that's the excuse. Parking is a revenue generator for the city, a lot more so than resource allocation issue. The city would much rather have more tickets issued than people swapping out frequently.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
And why shouldn't parking generate revenue for the city? It's a limited public resource. Roads don't build themselves. Of all the money that goes into the city coffers charges for parking are probably some of the fairest. Much better that sales taxes, for example, and Chicago sales tax is already astronomical.
The efficiency is not exactly the issue.
The issue is that "King" Daley ram-rodded this BS through and sold off ALL parking in chicago to a group of stock brokers. They're already putting in boxes on the lake front to make a public asset (which used to be free) a private asset. Good luck to all the runners, soccer players, cyclists, and families who used to use the lakefront for fun, because now it will cost you $1 an hour (with big increases to come).
This whole thing stinks awfully badly, and I hope there is a lot of civil disobedience regarding these boxes. It isn't raising money for the city, it's just lining the pockets of a large brokerage firm.
There was NO public discussion over these things. It just got pushed through.
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I don't understand the modern viewpoint that cars are evil, and their usage should be discouraged. They are simply an update of the classic horse-and-cart that humans have used for 10,000 years, and the reason humans used these carts was because they were great for carrying lots of stuff.
Don't believe me? Well I just bought almost a month's worth of groceries. Try carrying 20 bags onto the local subway or bus or walk home. I think I'll keep my horseless cart. Thanks.
As to the point of the article - This is just more of the same politician stupidity that gave us hackable, error-prone computer voting (and eventually led to the return of paper ballots). Just because something is "new" doesn't mean it's better than the old system. The old mechanical meters invented in the 1920s may not be sexy, but they get the job done, and as this article demonstrates the new meters are not any better.
An upgrade to new tech is only worthwhile if it's an actual UPgrade, rather than a downgrade.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Hell, last time I went to a private store, those idiots weren't even charging for their parking lot. I'm not surprised they're fucking this up.
The largest shopping centre in the European Union doesn't charge for parking. It has a total of 10,000 spaces, including three multi-story carparks. It also has it's own bus station, and train station.
That should tell people something about how to do parking right.
I don't understand the modern viewpoint that cars are evil, and their usage should be discouraged.
It's because, unlike horses, cars don't run on oats. You dig?
OK, you just bought a month's worth of groceries. What is your excuse for the other 29 days? I am assuming here that you are a typical American who drives 30+ miles a day, 5-7 days a week, since
I wonder if part of the problem in America is our lack of violence toward obviously corrupt and harmful politicians? (Lawyers, too.) They should be in a constant state of fear.
You, like most people miss the point of the new meters. They transfer the cost of use directly onto the driver. Where as the old meters had to be emptied and maintained by the thousands, these new meters can be emptied less often (more CC, less coin) and there are an order of magnitude less of them.
The ones they installed in Portland even have a spiffy automated cart that empties them. The meter maids pull up in their special golf carts, and the machine does the rest. It's considerably cheaper for the city itself, and the "cost" is the same to the driver. With the added bonus of slightly more hassle. It's also no longer possible to break a meter to get free parking, something I have seen done more than once. Now if the local meter is broken, you are supposed to find the next nearest one and use it instead.
The only downside for the city is the increase in pedestrian accidents because people are forced to cross the street (usually mid block) to get to the meter on the other side. And then back again. Most people just jaywalk, and this causes accidents. Portland had an expose about it a year or so ago, but I can't be bothered to dig through the horrid oregonian website to find it.
There are plenty of transport options of which you missed buses, local train services, crossrail, private coach operators, mopeds, motorcycles, electric/hybrid vehicles, taxis. Yes the tube is fairly expensive but public transport in London is still pretty good considering the load it works under.
As for cars, screw cars. The congestion charge was introduced in because cars ground London to a standstill. For 95% of commuters there is no reason at all to drive in anyway since central London (where charging occurs) is very well supplied with tube and bus routes. If you absolutely must drive and don't want to pay the charge, you have plenty of other choices, including driving hybrids and electric vehicles which incur no charge.
Does that mean London's transport system is perfect? Far from it but it works and works quite well aside from when the unions decide to go on strike.
Fact is that the SOIL is public. That means that the SOIL is YOURS. Now would you like to be charged for living into your house? I doubt it.
Ever heard of property/real estate tax?
Every year I do. Technically, you never truly 'own' property. You do own the rights to the property, but it's never "yours" as in say "I paid for some clothes and they are mine forever to do with what I wish." So to keep the rights, you have to pay a tax to the real property owner, the Government. Don't think so, skip out on your property taxes enough and the Government will take it. And don't forget about Eminent domain. (aka compulsory purchase in the UK).
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Do you ever eat anything fresh? I'm surprised you don't get scurvy or something.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You'd have to pay and maintain a force of a lot more attendants than are currently needed.
The real problem is that we don't think that's a good idea.
We offshore all manufacturing and remote-service (telephone). Then we automate as much existing service as we can.
End result: No one has a fucking job.
Perhaps we should just, you know, hire a people at ten dollars an hour to run around photographing cars, or at least emptying meters, instead of building a giant multi-million dollar system.
The real joke is that half these multi-million dollar systems don't work right, so end up getting replaced way before they make back the money they cost. And the half that work are via 'partnerships' with private industries who pay for the cost, but then skim so much off the top that they don't make as much money as they did originally either.
We're spending more money to have less jobs and a crappier system. The only advantage is that private companies selling the system make more money, and I don't...oh, wait. I get it now.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Which reminds me of my first thought upon seeing this story... My solution? Park in some city OTHER than Chicago.
Seriously, if you want to drive people away from downtown businesses, make parking onerous compared to malls, where it's always free and a lot easier to find a spot, too.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
No they should put the meters directly next to the parking space, just like the old mechanical meters.
And if that's considered "too costly" then maybe these new meters should not be installed - stick with the old tried-and-true method.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I'd rather do daily groceries by bike.
Do you have children? Do you live with a partner? Does s/he work? My wife and I each work and get home from work at around 5:30. We have dinner with our daughter around 6 or 6:30, then bath time, story time and bed time with one parent, while the other parent cleans up from dinner. Then it's an hour or so of 'us' time, before we head to bed. Where exactly in our schedule is this mythical time to do 'daily groceries by bike' in the dark pouring rain in February?
What you're describing is the effect of minimum-wage laws: when you institute (or raise) a minimum wage, the jobs that paid less don't become better paid, they just go away entirely.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No. We lack public transportation because the population isn't dense enough to make it feasable.
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JimFive
Please stop using the word theory when you mean hypothesis.