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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?"
Yay, first post!
They have those things in Sacramento California also, they suck! I hate them! They're the worst!
I heard in some cities though that they place sensors under the parking spots that reset the meter whenever somebody removes their car, as another way of making sure nobody gets any free time.
If one were to forge the ticket (which can not be examined closely while under the dash glass...), I wonder how often the meter readers would actually check the machine data or ticket number/serial?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Also, the new meters could have worked, but the out-sourcing to a private company destroyed any hope of that.
An example of their ineptitude: they forgot to put batteries in some of the meters, making it impossible to get the magic slip of paper, and then ticketed people for it.
Here in Calgary there's a similar system called Park Plus. If you park downtown you have to find one of the park plus machines (they're not very hard to find, they're all over the place), and punch in your license plate # and a 4 digit code indicating where you're parked (those are on signs all over the place too). There's no receipt or parking pass though. The system is enforced by a set of trucks covered in cameras and antennas. I presume they automatically scan the license plate of every parked car and check against the central system whether you've paid or not. What's pretty cool about it is you can also setup a debit account with the system, and then pay through your cell phone- call the system once when you park to 'check in' and again when you leave to 'check out' and it deducts the payment from your account.
Where I live, Burbank, CA, we got rid of all parking meters -- and good riddance to boot! You can park anywhere in Burbank without paying a fee -- pull into any city lot and go to the local AMC Theater, watch a movie --> head on over to your favorite eating spot, have a bit to eat --> head on over to the ice cream shop, get a double-dipper --> browser the magazine shop, read later PC Magazine --> walk the Media Center Mall, hang out with friends --> finally head back to your car! NO RUNNING TO DROP QUARTER. Nice
The Spice Must Flow!
Everyone says they want cities to stop over spending on infrastructure and to have realistic services but every time they inconvenience you just a little bit it's back to "spend spend spend! I can't walk half a block!"
In a number of cities in Israel you purchase scratch-off cards in connivence-stores. When you want to park you scratch the date/time off the card (to "activate" it) and hang it in your window. I think its pretty brilliant. No physical infrastructure to maintain. To money/coins to collect. If the city wants to change the price of parking - they just change it. No machines to update.
My city started installing this system and I thought it was inefficient but could be more convenient in some circumstances.
However, I talked to one of the parking enforcement people and it was eye opening. They now know exactly when a meter expires via a wireless link from the smart meter to a handheld device. No need to walk past every meter now. They can just get a reading of which spot is expired and if a car is in that spot.
It's just a giant money grab by the city under the guise of "smart" technology. It's smart alright - smart for the city.
In Ann Arbor, the "smart" meters are susceptible to an exploit where if you add 5 cents of time to a meter, you remove all the existing time on that meter. For $1, a prankster can reset 20 parking spots and watch everyone get parking tickets. More info at this screenshot of a now-deleted comment on AnnArbor.com.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
And painted lines are either too small to parallel park your stupid Hummer, or a massive waste of space to park a smart car. Without lines, you can squeeze more cars into a block because people get right on each others ass--which is the way it should be. Everybody should get on each others ass, that way there is no wasted space.
Put in lines, and you waste an assload of space so some idiot can parallel park his boat-car.
No thanks. I'll keep my city streets free of painted lines and if they become painted, I (and most of my neighbors) will take the suggestion, but if there is enough space, we'll happily park our cars between the lines. After all, when it takes 15 or 25 minutes to find a space, if my car can fit, I'm parking it--fuck your lines.
PS: nothing makes me smile more than grown men who need their wife/girlfriend/friend to get out and guide them into *giant* spot. Buddy, I can park your car so there is only two inches between the guy in front and the guy behind and do it without tapping either bumper. It takes a while, but as I said, when you look for 25 minutes to find a spot--if I even think I can fit, fuck it, I'm going in!
Arlington, VA has recently replaced alot of their parking meters with them as well. Each space has an individual meter that works exactly like the old one did, except it can take a credit card as well. Problem solved.
Here in Auckland, NZ, we just fire a text message to the parking meter's 4 digit shortcode. $2 comes off the mobile balance, and parking paid. Granted, there needs to be a nearby parking meter so you can get the validation code from it, but they're not more than maybe 20 metres away in most places. You can still pay by cash or Visa if you want to.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Don't know if they still do this in Germany, but when I was a kid I remember an honor system they had for parking time limits The way it works is you have a big plastic dial that you set to the current time, and place on your dashboard. Parking enforcement comes around once in a while, and checks when you said you left your car. If you set your dial ahead when you get out of the car and they spot it, you get a ticket. If the dial says you got out too long ago, you get a ticket.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You think that's a joke, but I have heard of at least one company of this sort getting fidgety about contract re-negotiations, and holding all of the cars ransom when they didn't win. Cars get to just rot in there, and everybody gets a bad feeling about robo-parking for a while.
Turns out the Accounts department didn't like me doing that, and cancelled it without telling me. Apparently they'd rather I fill out an expense claim, get it signed by my manager, than fax it to accounts, at which stage they'd credit it to me again. For two dollars, every month (man of principle, etc.)
Corporate Accountants FTW - without them two dollars each month would be incorrectly classified as Telecomms rather than Travel - thank god they caught me out at my terrible little game.
People too poor for a ramp (read: college students me) could instead trade time for a spot. Sure, you might have to circle for 10 minutes and park further away but that meter might only cost you 25c for 15 minutes.
I understand that more expensive parking puts the cost of driving more clearly on the driver but I don't like it. Ramps are already quite expensive and meters are hard to find so I like being able to spend my time instead of money (it still puts the cost on me...just in a way that I can handle). Also, a lot of the heaviest drivers don't use meters--they have monthly parking passes for work at a steep discount compared to hourly parking.
I get that increasing the perceived cost driving will cut down on unessential car use but sometimes it is simply necessary. Necessary car use is what things like uhaul and zipcar (and igo car--the chicago only zipcar equivalent that I use sometimes) are for...whenever I am parking somewhere, you can rest assured that I *need* to be doing that driving because I am already paying out the ass for mileage on a uhaul or on the clock for my igo car...
Bottles.
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?