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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 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...
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.
They could be smart (at least, smarter than traditional ones), but placement, cost, procedure, etc are human (like the ones that decided where they must go, numbers, etc).
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?
Robot Parking Garage
You can build them upwards, you can build them downwards. They take up so much less space than sidewalk parking. Properly designed, they can park and retrieve vehicles really freaking fast.
This reminds me of the Gwinnette County traffic camera deal in Georgia where a private company took over a public service and it goes to heck. Granted the camera deal included a kickback from every ticket, so the company exploited the system to issue more tickets, but still... ideas like this should be brought before the public before implementation so that these problems have a chance to be thought through. Let me step down from the soapbox...
Body in a woodchipper...HA HA!
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.
We have a pretty decent system in Calgary. The pay boxes are easily found downtown, and the payment is linked to your license plate so you don't need to go back to your car. Also payment via cellphone is available. All in all I like the new system compared to the old time meters.
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.
read your CC. I stayed at the Downtown Holiday Inn and had to pay cash all week at that paticuliar lot while all the others took my card !!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I don't know, it doesn't sound all that bad...I mean really, at no point in that process was there any mention of form 26-B. What more do you people want?
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
old style meters if you park at one with time left over then the city "lost" money
new meters when you park unless someone gives you a ticket with time on it you have to pay even if the person before you didn't use all their time
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
Maybe something similar to the toll system called ezpass. http://www.ezpass.com/
Instead call it e-zpark or whatever. After being in your parking spot for X amount of time, charge your account for it. That way, you don't pay for time not used and you also don't have to waste time feeding the meter. You also won't be dupped into feeding the meter when they're free (such as on the weekend or after hours). For spots with a time limit, they could increase the rate after you've reached the time limit and/or send you a txt message telling you that you're time was about up.
They even make these handy devices which can be used to hold quarters and fit in your car's cup holders, or stick themselves to something on the dashboard to the right of the driver, or....
If you don't park downtown regularly - great! $20 in quarters should last a long time. If you do park there regularly - all the more reason to be prepared and stocked up!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I've seen this in multitude of places world wide. Not so popular in US but exists here and there. What exactly is their problem? Walking half a block extra? I knew people in Chicago were some of the least fit in the country but this sounds like extreme whining. Would they prefer to walk back from wherever they are every hour to "feed the meter"? Or do they want a system that lets them pay without leaving the car? That's called a parking garage :)
It must be me, but this story sounds like it was written by a whiny 16-year old who just got his driver's license. You mean, WALK an entire HALF of a block?!? GOD FORBID you stretch your legs out upwards of 20 feet. And then you have to WAIT FOR THE RECEIPT TO BE PRINTED?!?! O-M-G that takes forever, like 20 seconds at least. The world will END in that time...
DEAL WITH IT!
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
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?
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.
The system works pretty well in Vancouver, Canada.
You can use coins as normal or you can dial a phone number to pay by credit card. Each meter has a number used to identify it.
The first time you use it, you have to register a license and your credit card number. After that, it remembers it based on your caller id I would imagine. You can register multiple cars no problem. It's a bit of a pain enter your license the first time you use it (it would be nice if you could try to use voice recognition first) but after the first time, it's pretty smooth.
The nice thing is that you don't have to go back to your car when you run out of time. To me, that is the biggest pain of street parking. Forget that you have to go half a block to pay for parking. If you have to run back from a few blocks, or in the middle of eating, that is even worse. With the system, we just call the number again and it asks if you want to extend your time. You just enter how many minutes.
I usually use it like this: (a) put in as many coins as I have and take a picture of the meter which has the id number with my iPhone (b) if I'm not back by the amount of time I got from the coins, I call and add time.
Sunny
Be my Friend
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!
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.
that systems will need to set up not to tag people who are not parking but are stuck waiting for traffic.
and I've never had a problem with them. However, I've never had to walk more than a few cars down to use one. I've never been more than 2nd in line (possibly because there are usually a couple close to where I park to choose from), and never thought to myself that I wish there the old-style meters.
Also, people are usually pretty good and stick their unused time back on the meter for others to use. You're not supposed to, but it always feels good to give or get.
Overall, I'm happy with the system.
How about pre-paid parking slips you can print from home and place in your window? They could have a barcode that someone scans to make sure it's valid. OR, text your parking order, pay via text, and the system texts back a unique code for the day or the time period. Hand-write this code on a piece of paper, slap it in your window, and the meter reader can use a hand-held device to check the validity of the code. Or, you can text your parking 'order' while in your car. You just run and pick up your slip to put in your window (instead of paying at the parking hub, you just type in a code in a separate line and pick up your ticket).
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!"
The town of Wrightsville Beach, NC uses regular parking meters. In additon to using coins, each meter has a unique serial numbered clearly marked, and you can pay for your parking using your cell phone. You have to sign up online - I managed to sign up via my BlackBerry for the first use. It's really convenient and best of all - you can "feed the meter" via cell phone without returning to your car. http://www.park-by-phone.com/
One system that I've seen is Pay by Phone. I've not used it myself, but how it works is that each parking space has a number which you enter over the phone along with your vehicle registration number, how long you're staying, and your credit card details. The system allows you to add extra time over the phone, and avoids problems with broken/vandalised meters.
what about some kind of service that works online and/or through the phone? every parking spot could have a unique id that is easy to find, and purchasing the spot could be done on a [smart] phone. of course it would be trickier for a meter maid to determine if a spot is paid for, but i'm sure they could come up with some way to solve this...
weinersmith
I work for Dick Jones! Dick Jones! He's the number two guy at OCP! OCP runs the cops!
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
Other then slowly loosing your ability to walk I don't see what the problem is. Most parking meters in Sydney work in exactly this fashion. I've actually never seen the old style meter per car system used anywhere. About the only parking meter system that has annoyed me was a numbered bay system where you have to walk up to the machine and tell it which pay you are in and then pay the fee. And if you accidentally pay for the wrong bay, well then it sucks to be you.
read my mind at http://the-willows.blogspot.com/
Both Pay and Display and Pay on Foot allow for either credit cards or "parking cards" (Smart cards that carry a cash-equivalent balance) to be used. http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/parking/automated/parking_cards/parking_card_use_en.html). Parking meters can accept both coins and parking cards.
I'm a Portland resident and have been in constant contact with these meters since they were installed a few years back. Seriously, they are not that bad! I don't know why there is even a debate about them. They are reasonably dispersed in Portland, so the "have to walk" argument does not apply. The price is about what you would expect for street parking... And anybody stupid enough to be street parking for 24 hours deserves the cost. You need overnight? Try a garage. Much cheaper.
So far, no drawbacks. Plus you can use a credit/debit card. I was thrilled when these went in here in Portland, and I haven't changed my mind yet.
Can somebody please give a solid answer as to why these meters are a problem?
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.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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).
It's a problem that you don't have to carry around pockets full of change and pay a sizable portion of it just in the servicing of thousands of machines all over town? Too bad all of the profits and savings are now going to a private profit making entity instead of your tax coffers.
I hope that the inconvenience finally gets people to start parking outside of the city center and cities will invest more heavily in public transit. Maybe we can turn to digging up some of these streets and putting in useable space for people instead.
1. Park your car.
2. Walk up to 1/2 block to store entrance.
3. Wait in line to enter and obtain a cart.
4. Pass the checkout counters and walk the equivalent of two or three blocks inside the stoor while manually loading groceries.
5. Wait in line to pay using coins or credit cards.
6. Wait for a paper receipt to be printed.
7. Walk up to 1/2 block back to your car.
8. Place the groceries in the car.
9. Head off to your destination.
10. Carry groceries inside destination.
11. Store groceries in various locations depending on consumability and shelf life at room temperature.
Embarassingly, it is already like this in Portland, Chicago and other cities worldwide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_parking
Paris has had it since 1957, works great. No coins, no computers.
We have these all over in Baltimore - they just put them on my street this summer. Although they're usually more expensive (our city is on the cusp of allowing the meters to charge $3/hr.), they're still a good solution.
First of all, it's not that hard to use. You walk half a block, and stick a piece of paper on your dash. It's not that hard.
The advantages come into play because you can now fit more cars on a city block. With no fixed meters, more cars can (and do) fit in so long as people park with a modicum of skill. This is actually the impetus for installing the meters everywhere - more cars = more revenue for the city. But that's fine - I want my city to have money because then they can make the city better (I'm not adopting the "us vs. them" mentality for issues like parking revenue...). Personally, if you can fit more cars by the venues I want to go to, that's good for me.
The other moneymaker for the city is that it's easier to double dip on spots - before if someone put in 1 hours' worth of quarters, and then left half an hour later, a second person could pull in and get a free half hour. With these meters, the original driver usually drives away with the original ticket and the second person has to pay for that half hour as well. Of course, people are working their way around that by leaving their still-valid tickets by the machine, but this requires a) altruism and b) effort, both of which are usually in short supply in the city :)
How about get rid of private autos in the city entirely and improve the mass transit? I don't know how/if this would work for Chicago. But it's the best way forward in Manhattan, I can tell you.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
Oh my god. I dropped my cheesy fries, ice cream and XXL soda and almost had a heart attack just thinking about walking up to half a block! Please resuscitate me when somebody comes up with a drive-through parking meter payment system.
U of M tried this last year. Apparently didn't work, as conventional meters were restored to the block within 6 months.
Uh, before smart meters, the person after you was "stealing" from you due to a technical deficiency, now they're not. In fact, in Portland, you can move your car to a different spot and still use the remaining time, as long as you abide by the per-block time limits (usually 90 minutes). And by the way, if parking is so horrible on the street, private garages will arise to compete and wring out any surplus.
I know it would be a bit more complicated than those three sentences but we have the technology and the people to create such a system. Too bad we don't have the integrity.
Parking meter are not sold by the best technology, they are sold by the best kickbacks.
I worked for a company, and wrote the software for a street level parking kiosk that could do pay by space (enter a stall number), pay and display (put a ticket on the dash), and pay by plate (enter your plate number) all at the same time, and at the customers choosing. By having a slightly larger unit for every 10-15 spaces, you could offer payment by coin, bill, credit, cell phone, & stored value card (Gift Card).
Often though all the features that made sense (as a client is concerned) were disabled so that the revenue stream from parking and mostly ticketing is increased - Greed.
Of course, there are plenty of stupid meters out there. Most of the technology is still around the Commodore 64 era, and has never been improved. Any improvements you see are mostly cosmetic - ie, "New Fiber Optic Communications" are actually just a Serial to Ethernet converter, hooked into the existing RS-485 port on the machine.
Time travel is possible. We are quickly heading for 1984.
I would argue that most people know they will need to feed the meter, so can plan not to have to go to the ATM and/or find change first, but no amount of planning will avoid a walk to the paybox.
Alternatively, they could have the paybox, and NOT require you to display the receipt so you don't have to walk back. Just let the box remember when and for how long it was paid for each space. It's not very smart if it can't figure that out, now is it?
I've seen similar systems but they leave out the "walk back to your car" part. Sure, enforcers have to work harder but it's a lot more convenient for paying customers.
Enforcement is by having the meter tell the cop what slots are expired and the cop tickets those cars. These days there's no reason that can't be done by radio.
Imagine a cop walking up and down the parking lot and as he passes each spot, his black box beeps "ok," "expired," or "nearly expired." He'll go back and check the "nearly expired" ones 5 minutes later. This is technically feasible today.
Even better, for lots that are subject to video surveillance:
A central dispatcher sees the parking lot with an overlay of green, red, and yellow parking spots. A computer recognizes when an occupied spot goes from yellow to red and, with a human's confirmation to help avoid automated screw-ups, sends out a ticket or dispatches a human to write one. For what it's worth, I would hope the number of such meters under camera surveillance is small.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Toronto completely switched over to this type of parking meter a few years ago. Maybe Chicago utterly screwed up their implementation, but it seems to work out fairly well here. At least downtown, the entire time it takes to do the parking is just a minute or two. Honestly, not that much. Ok, it is longer than the 10 seconds of whatever from before. But as a plus side, the sidewalk is now effectively wider, which I think is great. It's clearly not ideal, but honestly, its not that bad.
My tokens are made of cloth and the one I need to pay the meter has a picture of a guy known for witty sayings and playing with electricity in the rain.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
In Israel (at least in Jerusalem) they used to have a really neat system (I haven't been there for a while now). You had two ways to pay:
1. Previously buy parking tickets with scratch-able time and date fields. Scratch off the date and time from a previously bought ticket. Put ticket in window. Each ticket is good for 1/2 an hour, so if you need more time, simply use more tickets.
2. Previously acquire and "charge" an electronic card/display gizmo. After parking press a button on it, this starts "eating up" time and showing that it is doing this on a the display. Place device in window.
When you get back to the car, stop timer.
I guess the device could be hacked, but it's just like any subway card with a big fat display and it knows how to eat up credit at a particular rate.
The main down-side is that there has to be a single price of parking in the municipal area. The other downside is that you have to buy these things in advance. But the ease of use are quite amazing, and with the electronic device, you do not have to guess the amount of time you need, you pay what you use.
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!
When these were installed in Portland some years ago, I distinctly remember telling my friend there "this may be convenient, but once you let these meters in, you realize, they can charge you whatever they want." While not the case in Portland, where these bastards have been installed in L.A. the rate for parking has "magically" gone from a reasonable $1.50/hr to $4!! per hour. You see, where once a dollar or $1.50 was "reasonable" for a person to pay in quarters, once the debit system is used, well, The Sky Is The Limit. L.A. has, for the moment, the highest street parking rates in the nation. That is until some other city installs these bastards and charges whatever they damn please for street parking.
I rarely have to walk more than 100 feet to a paybox. And if that's too far, I would suggest the problem is not with the paybox....
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Denver is currently piloting a meter that is really nice. It looks like a traditional meter, but it accepts credit cards instead of just coins. Convenient, easy, and apparently not very difficult to retrofit.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Too bad the meters weren't replaced with small units that could sense if a car is parked in it, then check for a RFID tag and bill whoever is parked there accordingly. Alternatively have the person who is parked there just swipe a tag against the meter. Have the meters wirlelessly communicate with one of those stations they have all over the place. It would be convenient cause it wouldn't overcharge and your time would never run out. Each month the person gets a bill for their meter usage. If a person doesn't pay the meters easily alerts meter maids to come write tickets. Pressure pads or smart sensors could be used.
It's win win for both the government and the people, although you don't get all the overpay from people buying too much time, but then again no one likes that.
You don't need to charge to enforce time limits. It is perfectly possible to have a "Max stay 1 hour" rule (enforced by ticketing or towing violators) without needing to charge everyone who doesn't overstay their welcome.
Metering system required, please read requirements carefully before submitting bid:
1. Must frustrate 100% users to level one (annoyance, moderate cursing) .1% of users to level four (homicidal rage, preferably directed at passerby, but homicide of meter maids is acceptable)
2. Must frustrate 30% of users to level two (loud abusive cursing, and/or banging on meter device)
3. Must frustrate 10% of users to level three (violent behaviour and abuse chargeable as a misdemeanor)
4. Must frustrate at least
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Toronto has had similar style parking meters for a while. Paying for parking by credit card is actually pretty convenient - when it works. When you're paying $8 for parking, hunting down change isn't much fun (even if we do use $1 and $2 coins)
The original meters that were installed simply validated that the credit card swiped was valid, and stored the payment internally. People soon caught on and started using prepaid credit cards that were maxed out to pay. I experienced this first hand one day when we were parking, and a guy walking by and said "don't waste your money" to me, walked up to the meter, swiped a card, and paid for our parking that night.
The company that created the parking meters responded by upgrading the meters to store a blacklist of 1000 numbers. The machines were occasionally updated with a new set of blacklisted credit card numbers. Eventually, there were more prepaid and maxed out credit cards going around the city, so they upgraded the machines again with a 10,000 number blacklist. This approach inevitability failed as well, as the blacklist grew too large.
The next step was to install a modem into each of the parking machines. When you attempted to pay with a credit card, the machine would say "dialling...", and they would contact a credit card validation service somewhere. Nine times out of ten, this credit card validation routine fails to connect to the validation service properly, and the machine refuses to accept payment.
Sigh....if only these machines were a little "smarter"
They work great in Portland Oregon. I don't mind walking a little ways and I can move to another spot and keep my time. The only thing I don't like about them is that they don't take dollar bills, only coins and cards.
Go ahead and take the bus then, nobody's stopping you.
I remember hearing about a system that uses photography and computer anaysis on the cars to figure out exactly how long you parked and whose car it is. Tie that to a credit card and you don't have to do anything. Except it also ends parking ticket revenues, which is priced in to the system. Would you be willing to pay more so that you'd never pay late fees again (a la Netflix)to compensate for the revenue loss? Perhaps capturing each minute of all cars who weren't paying for parking before (the ones who would have gotten tickets) would take care of it. If that's the case, it's really win win, if you think about it.
Having lived in SF, I have a deep hatred of parking cops. The city puts in meters with a 1 hour max time next to restaurants. Then, as the lunch hour is ending, they ticket everyone who runs 2 minutes over.
Knowing how these people act, they will wait in the shadows for the person to leave their car to walk to the "smart meter". Your car will be parked without a proper parking receipt on the dash for 30 seconds as you walk to the "smart meter", and you will be ticketed. All written appeals will be automatically rejected - as they are in SF. You'll need to actually get in front of a judge with no connection to the parking system to get a fair ruling.
The only thing most cities do efficiently is pursue writing parking tickets.
Seattle has these meters and you can walk about three or four cars in any direction and find a meter. *Three or four cars* Gasp! I'm getting winded just typing about the horror!!!
In Taiwan it appears driver friendly rather than operator friendly. People just park and leave, then a parking inspector would come round every 30 minutes or something, take a photo of their number plate with a device, and leave a waterproof ticket on their windshield. Each time the inspector comes round he or she leaves more tickets on each windshield. When the driver comes back they get all the tickets and pay them at the nearest 7-11. I assume you have a certain grace period to pay the tickets.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
You'd think, but at least in Chicago, the privatization contract included anti-competitive clauses:
Section 3.12. Competing Off-Street Parking.
(a) Subject to Section 3.12(b) and Section 3.12(c). the City will not operate, and will not permit the operation of, a "Competing Public Parking Facility." A "Competing Public Parking Facility" means any off-street public parking lot or public parking garage that (i) is (A) owned or operated by the City or (B) operated by any Person and located on land owned by the City, or leased to the City, (ii) is within one mile of a Concession Metered Parking Space, (iii) is used primarily for general public parking; (iv) has a schedule of fees for parking motor vehicles that is less than three times the highest Metered Parking Fees then in effect for Concession Metered Parking Spaces in the same area; and (v) was not used for general public parking on the effective date of this Agreement.
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!
Here (in Bulgaria, Sofia) the only thing You have to do is to send an SMS with your car's registration number. And that is for one hour. If You see that one hour won't be enough then send another sms. I have template with my car's number so I press 2-3 buttons and voila parking is paid. The bill is included in your cell's one.
Amazingly, that (passing the ticket) might be illegal depending on your local parking ordinances. Some cities already prohibit paying for another person's vehicle... (to prevent sending a runner out to feed the meters in front an workplace or shop)
That gave us BHO......hope & change!
I am sure the Slashdot Geek Army can design a better smart parking meter than this one.
First have an option to buy a parking pass for $100 a month, place it on the rearview mirror to avoid getting a ticket. But no, the Police station wants to earn revenue so that idea won't work.
Second issue parking meters with solar panels and can accept coins or a debit card or credit card swipe. It has a Wifi connection and a web camera to monitor the parking. The solar panel charges a battery that is used at night. You can also use your mobile phone or hand held device to access the city web site and enter in the parking meter ID number and pay that way via Paypal or via bank account, debit card, credit card, and set up an account with the city.
Wouldn't it be great if someone invented open source software and open source technology to make these meters, so they could be made cheaply enough that cities can afford them without that ghastly 75 year lease?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Pay for lessons, pay for a license, pay for a car, pay for insurance, pay for fuel, pay for parking, perhaps pay for security and GPS, any way you look at it, vehicles are too expensive.
Twinstiq, game news
Many years ago, some shops used to transfer money from teller to a main booth by wires. Clip the money to the wire, shoot it from the teller to get change and whoosh it would come back. That's what they need here, wires and pulleys. Put your money in a tiny little sack on a string and whizz it alone the wire and the machine would take it, spit out a paper ticket and then whizz the sack back. It'd be awesome for the first five minutes, then you can marvel for years about the crazy parking system that lasted five minutes and then was vandalized. Planned nostalgia.
Task Mangler
Entertaining essay, but what does it have to do with parking meters?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yeah, the ParkMagic is a joke. They could just as easily set up the system so that you park, enter your parking space number and press a big red button on the front of the box and a timer starts indicating how long you've parked. You put it in your windshield to let the parking enforcers know that you're paying. When you get back, you press the red button again and only get charged for the amount of time that you were in the space.
If the spot is two-hour parking and your meter reads 2:05, then you get a passing parking enforcer can write you a ticket. If you enter the wrong number for someplace where the parking is cheaper, you can get a ticket. Otherwise, you only pay for what you use.
Instead they make you guess how long you'll be there, knowing that you're either going to guess too much or get a ticket. Come on ... cut us a break.
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?
The Three R's of Portland
or
Why Portland Sucks
"Latte Town" was coined a few years back and is the most appropriate term for the City of Portland that I have ever heard. A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface. Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland's dirty little secret is revealed. Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about. Drive through any neighborhood surrounding the downtown area and the impression that you get is that Portland is nothing more than a series of elitist ghettos compromised of rich white homosexuals, rich white yuppies, rich white hippies, rich white trust funders, and rich white kids from the suburbs pretending to be street people. Where's the diversity? Well it doesn't exist but the average Portlander likes the concept and in their eyes the different shades of rich whites all constituent diversity. In a series of articles I will attempt to breakdown and explain these subtle distinctions between the various factions of lily white, latte people that make Portland what it is.
The Artist-Intellectual
The visitor or newcomer to Portland is bound to be struck by the sheer numbers that belong to this group. They seem to be everywhere and are in fact everywhere. They are the reason that all the coffee shops have tables and chairs. The artist-intellectual fancies himself as a poet, a writer, a musician, a filmmaker, etc. You get the drift. They spend most of their days idling around the coffee establishments that one finds every 10 feet. They are usually equipped with a notebook that they use for their poems, journals or their artwork. No one ever gets to see the contents of these notebooks. More often than not they have a beaten and weathered paper back copy of some book authored by Kafka or William S. Boroughs. They love to discuss their favorite subject, themselves. Given the opportunity they will prattle on for hours about their poems, art work or the film they are making. You never get to actually see any of their work but you do get to hear about it. Their lives are like one never ending semester in grad school. Initially I believed these losers but then got to thinking. What would an aspiring actor, artist, musician, filmmaker being doing in Portland Oregon, a latte town? Why wouldn't they be in NYC or LA? Because they're phonies, that's why. Here's how it works with these clowns. They flunk out of college in New Jersey so their parents send them to Reed College in Portland in hopes that they will get their act together. They drop out of Reed but stay in Portland while still on Daddy's tab or some trust find. One Saturday Josh or Seth drifts down to one of the hundreds of hippie craft markets downtown. Some hippie is selling didgeridoos that he made I between bong reps. Josh buy one and takes it home where he proceeds to get baked after which he blows a few sour notes into the didgeridoo. The next day he's a musician. Not really but that's what he's telling everyone at the coffee house and pretending is good enough for a Portland artist-intellectual, in fact it's everything. In three months he will switch his designation from musician to filmmaker and then onto to something else 3 months later. As long as it sounds cool he will keep this charade up and no one in his circles will call him on it because they are doing the same thing.
The Activist
This group is usually comprised of people that used to be part of the artist-intellectual group in Portland. They have gotten a little older and may have finally, after 12 years, obtained a liberal arts degree from Portlan
An absolute double-indemnified, genuine, authentic pain in the ass. They break down all the time, and when they do, here in Baltimore it can take days to repair them. Meanwhile, people are just supposed to refrain from parking in the affected block. They lie. You can put as much money as you want to in them. Baltimore has chosen to print any time limitations in such small print that they're virtually unreadable. It encourages feeding the public coffers. God forbid they should put up a legible sign that says something like "1-hour metered parking." To me, they look suspiciously vulnerable to bogus card readers, so I never go anywhere near one with a credit card. I still carry a pocket full of change when I have to go downtown. They don't accept dollar bills. You can buy a soft drink or some chips from a vending machine with a dollar bill. Why not pay to park with one? They encourage people to park stupidly and to waste space. Everybody hates to parallel park, but you can allow a reasonably small gap between your car and the one in front or in back--as opposed to half a car length. The old-fashioned meters pretty well determined exactly where your particular spot began and ended. They are a triumph of bad engineering.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
traditional coin-op parking meters suck in their own ways.
Yeah they do. A broken kiosk means an extra couple blocks of walking - a broken parking meter means you lose the change* and have to find a new space. I prefer the kiosks to traditional meters while acknowledging there are problems with 'em.
*I darn near wrote "loose" instead of "lose" (which I never do). I almost wish I had just for the undoubtedly entertaining replies.
That's just braindead. Any politician who thinks like that should be forcibly removed from office. (note: I'm not advocating violence, just a lack of tolerance where it's clearly undeserved.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Driving to work is for chumps.
Them, and people who are stuck living far from work in places with no public transit.
.sig withheld by request
We've had them here for many years now. In actuallity, "half a block" winds up being some twenty steps. It's really nothing to complain about -- even in the worst of weather. And there is no waiting in line. One box covers maybe thirty parking spots. So really we're talking about 30 drivers over the span of what, 30 to 300 minutes? Maybe once a month I get to wait for one other driver for ten seconds. Again, really nothing to complain about.
In the end, they tend to work way better than the old meters, and taking credit cards makes like really convenient -- I've gotten rid of the change tray in my car.
But by far the best part of them is that they've started to show up in all sorts of other parking areas -- lots, buildings, etc.. It's gotten rid of all of those stupid "parking guy booths". Now that's a pleasure.
But still no one knows if you can keep your same parking voucher and use it across the city within the specified time. I guess it doesn't really come up that often.
But there is one annoying part. You can't seem to "extend" your time mid-way. So if you buy a two-hour thing, and after 30 minutes want to extend it for an additional 2 hours, you either lose your initial 90 minutes, or you wait and extend it at the last possible second. Again, this hasn't come up.
I no longer drive into the city for anything I can get outside of Crook County. They have simply priced themselves out of the market.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Yes, but that omg-terrible-trouble can be resolved by an ounce of Preparedness:
I tried that, and they wouldn't give me any money. They threatened to call the police unless I left. Your plan will never work.
.sig withheld by request
It costs you $100 to park? Wow, I hope I never have to park where you live...
And no, it is not a whoosh - I saw the title where he's saying parking is expensive where he lives. I got the joke, but I've never seen metered parking being particularly expensive, though private lots are overpriced everywhere I've seen.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
Parking enforcement in Providence RI was turned over to a private company. Same kiosks btw.
I've walked past a few that had "FATAL ERROR" on their displays. Or that just weren't working at all. They're not environment hardened and they should be. They could learn a thing or two from the guys who make gas pumps where the card reader works when it's 10 below 0 and the thing doesn't just break down.
And it's pretty easy to game the system. I have a thermal printer in my possession suppose I were to print my own receipt? Who'd know?
Or poor public transit - a 3 hour bus ride with 2 exchanges to go 30 miles is bollocks.
Oh, was that my outside voice?
Our system has been around for a while and works well: 1. Memorize the letter and three digit number at your parking spot. 2. Pay at the nearest pay station using credit card or cash. (These stations always seem to be within 30 metres of any parking spot.) 3. Take the printed receipt and go. There's no need to return to your car. You'll find more info here: http://www.statdemtl.qc.ca/index.php?page_id=89&lang=en.
and that is not a bad thing. Study after study has shown that by charging for parking you build in some the economic externalities into the cost of driving. think of it as a way to discourage congestion. it gives more people the opportunity to park downtown if people are discouraged from lingering. Sure you could charge more for gas or have fees to enter the city, or any number of things but this is easy to implement and has fewer side effects (as raising gas would). By making it difficult you pay with nuisance and wasted time rather than cash, which is a less regressive form of taxation.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Indeed. Bike, walk or use public transit. Driving to work is for chumps.
No, public transit is for chumps. If you don't live on a popular route, or have to travel diagonally across the grid, transit is pathetic. One second late at the starting end of a trip could mean an hour+ late at the other end. Biking or walking is too weather dependant. Perhaps if you live in a place where it is sunny and warm 90% of the time, it might be an option, but hereabouts, there's only about three or four months worth of bikeable/walkable weather. The rest is snow and rain. Not only that, but it's impossible to get out of town on public transit (apart from a few non-corridor VIA routes where they'll stop the train in the middle of nowhere to let people off).
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Let me first say that I don't really even know how technology the iPass type solution actually uses or how expensive it is to implement, but how about this idea for metered parking?
Leave curbside meters up. Have them take cash still for occasional visitors but for people who commonly use the cities' metered parking get something like the iPark with an "On/Off" switch. When you park, you hit the "On" switch. The meter flips to "Paid". Your account is debited for the duration of your stay. When you drive away and are out of range of the meter, the IPark turns "off".
Something along these lines seems like a really easy way to handle this problem.
Take your existing parking meter, add a smart card reader, poof, a much better solution to not needing to carry change. You can still use change if you want, but people who frequently deal with parking at meters will usually purchase a pre-paid smart card. Simply insert the pre-paid card into the meter and it will start to increment the time on the meter (deducting it from your card's value as you go). Once you have reached your desired amount of time (or the meter's max, or your card's max), simply remove the card and walk away to your destination. The cards can be purchased at many different locations, including the internet. No major paradigm shift in usage, which both the city and the car owner like (i.e. the city will still get to issue parking tickets (big revenue generator, just see "Parking Wars") for people who didn't put enough time on their meter, and the owner's don't have to worry about having enough change in their pockets).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
... they are VERY smart: they eliminate the human resource - parking meter collection people - that would otherwise cut deeply into their profits. You're actually paying in aggravation and wasted time so that Morgan Stanley can achieve a better ROI.
Your Sig: "Gay Marriage redefines your marriage as "no different than that of a gay couple". - Paraphrased from hitchkitty"
I'm intrigued, and not sure if you're on the "support" or "oppose" side of the gay marriage debate. I think that's one of the reasons people oppose gay marriage - they don't want their marriage to be seen the same way as gay marriage, since they have an irrational hatred/distaste/whatever of gay people and can't possibly believe that they might actually have a "real" relationship.
Are you one of these people, or are you putting this on your sig to show how absurd you think the idea is?
"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.
I actually like these things, if only because they take credit cards instead of having me search under my seat for loose change, or having to go accost nearby shopkeepers to break a 20. Baltimore started using them in the inner harbor area, and they're also somewhat similar to the way parking garages work at airports now.
I mean, they're designed for tourists. If you're a local, then you already have a parking space through work, or you know how to take transit downtown.
Anyway, I find them a wonderful improvement compared to regular parking meters, which also break or malfunction. If one of these deals goes south, you just walk a bit to the next one and buy a ticket. No lost parking spaces or parking tickets due to broken meters.
I don't really care for the other version of "smart meters" they have in some places - I think Rehoboth Beach uses them - where they consolidate 6 meters into 1 station, and you have to follow the signs and still have to pay for your particular assigned space, once you figure out which one it is since most of the numbers painted on the pavement get worn out. I guess perhaps it ostensibly eliminates the part where you have to walk back to your car to place your parking ticket... but I always find myself walking back and forth to make sure I paid for the right spot :P
In Australia, we call those "ash trays", most cars come fitted with them, they are damn handy for holding your spare coins for meters.
Dunno why they call them ash trays though.... :P
...
Last time I was out at the beach, I found a similar system had replaced our trusty meters in the public parking lots. The process for parking went something like this:
(1) Park
(2) Walk to one of the pay stations
(3) Insert credit card
(4) Walk to another pay station after realizing the card reader is busted
(5) Realize I don't know my space number
(6) Cancel purchase and walk back to my car
(7) Discover that the space number is printed on the ground underneath my car (kudos to the genius who came up with that)
(8) Find an empty space halfway across the lot and count backward to my car
(9) Go back to the second pay station, and wait in line behind the 6 people who magically arrived between steps 5 and 8
(10) Insert card, wait, enter space number, wait, select time, wait for ticket to print.
(11) Walk back to my car again (always on the far end of the lot from the one working pay station)
(12) Put the ticket on the dash of my car
(13) Walk to the beach, passing by the pay station I was just at
They take forever, are more prone to breaking (a meter breaks, one spot is affected...a pay station breaks, the whole lot is affected), and provide ample opportunities to screw up the purchase.
This is supposed to be an improvement over sliding a few quarters into a slot on the meter?
Surely you must have missed the word improve in his post. If he thought current mass transit was adequate, I doubt he would have bothered to include it. After all, you Americans are too lazy to walk a whole half block! I can only imagine the effort you must expend to type a 7 letter word.
In Germany some systems are in use that will bill your parking ticket to your cell phone number, like http://www.mobil-parken.de/cms/ (in german) or http://www.handy-parken.de/ (also in german).
Calgary uses what is, IIRC, a custom-built system where each section of street has a 4-digit number assigned. This number is posted on signs placed frequently along the road. Parking lots for which the city charges also get their numbers. There are boxes all over the place - you simply type in your license plate number and zone, and you are parked. You can also set up a prepaid account that is connected to your cell phone - you just dial the number and type in the zone and you are parked. Enforcement is done by a car with lots of cameras that drives around and determines automatically who is illegally parked; I don't know exactly how it works, probably by GPS and photo identification on the license plates. The biggest complaint is that the enforcement is far better than the old system of broken meters everywhere.
I consider any system to be successful if the primary flaw is that it works.
Parking meters in Montréal are being replaced by smart Linux wireless solar-powered boxes. The whole of downtown is done by now.
To use them, you just need to note the parking spot number, then walk to the nearby pay station in which you key-in the spot number and pay (they take credit and bank cards) for the duration you plan to park. You get a receipt which you don’t need to put on your dashboard; the parking spot and duration is sent to a central server.
Parking enforcement agents (the legendary “ green onions ”) then are told by a hand-held computer which spots haven't been paid or are expired when they do their rounds. The computer only needs to be told the license plate number, and it prints the whole parking ticket automagically without subjecting the green onion to the risk of writer’s cramp (unfortunately, he still has to get out of his car and put it under the wipers).
What greedy bastard came up with the idea of parking meters anyway? What a royal pain in the ass for our citizenry. And what a stupid waste of time and resources.
No, don't give me the silly story about needing revenues for the roads and getting it from those who use them. That's horse shit. We've all used them at some point, and likewise we should be willing to contribute to have them available should we ever need them in the future.
As for selling them off to a private company... just another corrupt and greedy bastard's bright idea.
People of Chicago! Form flash mobs and obliterate those damn meter machines!
:T:R:A:N:S:
They have these where I live in Oakland, CA, and they are not nearly so bad as the summary would have you think. For 1, the summary was complaining about the rates, which is not a fair indictment of the meter. The other complaint, that you have to walk to the meter and back to your car, it is not that big of a deal. Trust me. On the upside, getting to use a credit card over coins is a BIG win. Who caries coins any more?
San Francisco Photographers
is slashdot now a "the government does everything wrong"-whining platform? (go ahead, ask me if I'm new here) - governments around the world make a lot of mistakes, but in germany we have those parking-meters for a decade or so and it's really not such an indescribable imposition as the author of this article suggests...
so you walk 60 feet to much - big deal, how lazy are you?
standing in line? never had that!
$84? I never paid more than EUR8=$11.47! we pay EUR1=$1.43 per hour at most - and you only have to pay for the time between 6am and 8pm at most (usually less)
on the plus side you don't have to go feed the damn meter every hour...
$50 extra if you run out of time? that's different from today - how?
bottom line: you don't need to go crazy about every government decision - some (like this one) are not killing you, believe it or not!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I work in Glendale, CA (just north of downtown Los Angeles) and they recently installed smart meters on the main drag. Basically you go to the meter, type in your space number (each space has a number printed on it, pretty easy to read), and put in money, and it prints out a receipt. You do NOT need to put the receipt in the car, since the system knows which spaces have money still on them. You never have to walk more than about 50 yards to one of the kiosks, they're spaced pretty frequently. I don't know whether it's really an economic benefit overall for the people of Glendale, but they're pretty innocuous. Alas, I don't know what company makes them, but I can't really complain.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
In many cities, it isn't legal to park at a meter that has time on it without putting in some more time. Obviously this is nearly impossible to enforce, but it's been the law in Los Angeles since time immemorial.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
The summary describes the first part of our parking system well. That means when you park at the (pay for) parking space you have to go to the parking machine (which is generally near), insert some coins, get a ticket and put it on the dashboard.
But there is another, "more smarter way". You pay by sending a text message.
Lets say you park in the first zone (there are 5 zones afaik which have different prices), you just send a sms to 8511 (the last digit is the zone, the first three are the same always) with your licence plate. You immediately receive a confirmation sms and off you go. The amount is billed to your monthly bill with the mobile provider, or if you have prepaid, you are immediately billed. After an hour you will get another sms telling you that the time you paid for is expiring so you can just resend the last sms and the time will extend. The guys who check if you have paid the parking fee, walk up to your car, and if you don't have the ticket on the dash check by sending an sms to a parking server. They immediately receive confirmation if you paid by sms.
This is a great system and many people pay that way because it is so simple and convenient. You can even save your sms parking message as a template so you don't even have to enter it when you park, you just send it when you need to. Moreover, the mobile providers have put sim applications which enable you just to enter the parking zone (0-4) and licence plate for the first time. And did I mention that the price is pretty much the same as the normal ticket price?
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
I feel like I must be in the minority here. I've never had to wait to use one, I've never had problems with one reading my card, or getting what I wanted. FWIW, I don't park a lot in Portland. The meter systems we have seem to work just fine for me. I don't live downtown, or work downtown, so I'm not there real often, but the few times I've had to use the system has been pretty simple. I think the most inconvenient thing was waiting for the printout.
Or maybe the Chicago ones are too sparse and the Portland ones are placed frequently enough?
Portland has twenty blocks per mile compared to the more typical ten blocks per mile in most other big cities. So if there is a meter on every block it's going to be much closer to you in Portland than elsewhere.
In Soviet Russia a beowulf cluster of these things imagines you welcoming your new, neural-network overlords.
I live in San Francisco and a lot of people in the Bay Area currently use FastTrack to pay bridge toll, and one day it dawned on me that maybe people could use their FastTrack transmitter to pay for parking. It would require absolutely nothing to be done by the driver, assuming they have a FastTrack transmitter in their vehicle.
Imagine it: you pull up to a parking spot, a FastTrack sensor detects your car in spot #3, and it charges you for 15 minutes, you lock your car and walk away. The parking police only need to check the pay status of the parking spots on a central FastTrack terminal (or maybe an iPhone app), and if one isn't paid, they write a ticket.
This saves everyone a lot of time, and it uses technology that already exists and has proven to be reliable.
Considering how many people already have FastTrack, and that the transmitters are given away for free, I don't see why this idea wouldn't work incredibly well, at least for the SF Bay Area.
smattawichu
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.
Because they aim to collect parking VIOLATION fee, not parking fee.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
If you think he was being serious, then you clearly DIDN'T get the joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole
Yes, if they try to prevent it by passing some retarded law about who can pay for whose car.
If they want a time-limit, implement a time-limit. Otherwise families with kids will get off easy.
Besides, what does the criminality of your next-door business have to do with parking duration?
In most bigger towns in Austria you have SMS Mobile Phone Parking. (https://www.handyparken.at/) Its necessary to register upfront so its only for day-to-day users, but this is how it works: 0.) register your phone number, optionally associate it with a license plate number you usually by tickets for 1.) park 2.) send SMS with number of minutes you want to park to a number 3.) wait to receive receipt by SMS The people checking for valid tickets (in an awful case of denglish called "Park Sheriffs") have a small mobile device where they can check for a certain license plate if there is a mobile ticket available on the central servers. I guess its as expensive to give all the "Park Sheriffs" such a mobile device as putting a machine at every other street corner. And it works great. There are options for having a time delayed ticked or to by tickets for a different license plate of course. You can still by paper tickets at newspaperstands and the like if you are not registered or prefer the old way or have no mobile phone or...
Did anyone else notice that the car is parked illegally.
Well at least it's illegal to park that near a corner in most places on the planet. Chicago might have "special" laws. :)
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?
In my town we have sms-parking. We send an sms with the parkingzone and platenumber of the car. The default is is 1 hour parking/sms. When there is 10 minutes remaining of your parking time there is an sms sent you asking if you'd like to stay longer. The city is divided into zones depending on how much they want people to circulate, i.e. it's cheaper in less visited areas. No walking, no panicking about getting back to the meter before it runs out. It takes about 2 seconds per car for the parking attendants to check if you have paid or not via their own mobile systems.
We have these types of parking meters, but every meter also has a number on a pole on top of it and you can park your car and pay by calling a number and entering the zone number. When you step into the car you call the number again to stop the meter. The system has been used in Amsterdam for several years, it is called 'Yellowbrick'. For me the greatest advantages is that I pay by the minute and don't need to carry a kg of coins with me, and I get a nice invoice in my e-mail every time I park, that's especially useful for business-related parking.
How about paying with credit card via mobile phone either SMS or voice menu and the customer writes a number corresponding to the transaction on a piece of paper to go on the dash which can then be verified by a ticket checker using a mobile device. The ticket would be specific to your number plate and the billing system could even include other types of payment (even billing to your mobile account, paypal, webcredit, etc). Sounds pretty easy really.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Clearly the OP has a chip on his block. Clearly the /. editor (kdawson, what a surprise!) didn't bother to read the article AND the one paragraph blurb, to see that they're completely orthogonal. In fact, the OP misses the fact that in Europe these systems have been used for a decade or more, are incredibly reliable, very efficient, don't clutter up the street, don't have lines (come on, how many people are waiting to park at any given second?), are installed close to parking spots (yes, that 50m "half-block" walk to and from the car. Twice. Horror!), and seem to have general public acceptance.
Now, the article itself raises some very interesting points. Most of all the privatization of parking meters. Do we really want private entities being responsible for public punishment? Is it acceptable that a profit motive is behind causing people pain (fines and/or lost licenses). Is this in any, way, shape or form compatible with our ideas about government and responsibility? Are we not taking things too far, when we forget that punishment is to cause pain in response to flagrantly bad behavior, not just an incidental breaking of the letter of the law?
Perhaps someone who has some good links to these subjects could repost this story, in hopes that a real editor gets it this time.
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
In my part of the world, namely Estonia, most parking can be done with a cellphone. Fire off an SMS with your car plates and the zone you are parking(usually clearly visible somewhere near by) in to start the parking, and you are free to walk off. When you return, you make a 2 second call to another number and your parking is complete. SMS will be sent to you detailing the cost of parking. You pay it with your phone bill. This system is in addition to the meter system similar to OP-s.
We're taking a beating both as taxpayers and parking payers.
For parkers, hourly rates increased dramatically. They will more than double in the Loop (central business district), and neighborhood rates will be up 8X by 2013.
On the taxpayer side, my back of the envelope calculation says we were robbed:
The lease was $1.2 billion cash for 75 years.
Before the deal, the city made $20 million/year off the meters.
If the city kept the meters and doubled rates to $40 million, they would equal $1.2 billion in 30 years (not including interest).
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.
I saw a pretty decent system while travelling. They would have a parking meter station, maybe like the one from the article. So you need to walk to that, half block or whatever. But when there, this station has keypad on it, You enter the number of your space, which is listed on a tiny sign by each spot. And insert the ammount of money you want to pay. Nothing goes in the car window.
Additionally, on this station meter, you see a timer for the amount of time you have left. And if you're walking around a bit, you can check your time left from any of these stations around the city by entering your spot number, you can also top up from any of these as well.
Now i'm not sure the cost of this system, since it would also be networked around the city to work with these features. Again, not sure of the cost, but having an easy way to top up online would make these even simpler and save any walking at all. Everyone with mobile internet, just visit the site, enter your spot, and away you go.
Have 2 meters per block, at the 1/4 and 3/4 mark. Then you'll never park more that 1/4 block from a meter.>br>
With only 1/2 a block worth of cars per meter, you probably won't have to wait in line.
If you whine about walking 1/4 block, I may have to slap you.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
It sounds just like the pay boxes we use here in Madrid. Except we don't have the option of paying by credit card. And the boxes have a 2 hour maximum, so you have visit the paybox every 2 hours and take the new ticket back to your car. They suck, but it doesn't sound like the cost as much as Chicago. Here you would pay around â25 max per day. (assuming you remember to go to your car every 2 hours. If you forget, you can bet little meter maid people will be on hand to write you a ticket.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
...this is such a problem. Britain has operated this system for over 20 years as "Pay and Display", and I've never seen anyone over here take a real issue with it (Except that time where I overstayed and got fined £25 by Derby County Council....but it was my own fault, so hey, I wasn't too put out). It's not good or bad, just a way of paying for parking.
In Belgium we can buy parking time with a text msg. Just send aaaab licplate to an abbreviated number, and your parking costs get added to your cell phone bill. The guys that check have online access to the text database. aaaab is city-zone, licplate is just your license plate of course.
I'm not the smartest man in the world, BUT.....
How can the city effectively "sell" or "license" public property without asking for a vote/measure/ordinance/etc?
The money will disappear faster than a punch bowl full of painkillers at a celebrity bachelorette party.....
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Yes, the problem with America today is there's just NOT ENOUGH VIOLENCE.
Here in Belgium we have a very handy solution, park your car then simply send a text message from your mobile phone with your license plate number to a four digit number. When you leave the parking send a new message and the amount for the period you have parked will be automatically debited from your account. No running back and forth between the machine and your car. No risk of exceeding the time, unless you forget to send the end parking message of course.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
I love that idea, but I don't think it would work in the US. You'd have to pay and maintain a force of a lot more attendants than are currently needed.
Replace humans with cameras... with cameras. Let software do all the hard work.
As a bonus, you get surveillance of the parking spaces.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Which reminds me, couple years ago I stopped briefly to talk with a friend in his store. He told me "I hope you paid the meter, they are always on the prowl in this street", to which I replied "No worries, my wife is in the car", so the car's stopped, not parked. When I came out, there was a ticket under the back windshield wiper. My wife had seen nothing. Assholes.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Here (Belgrade, Serbia) we have a system that works for years: you can buy the ticket, more or less exactly as described, or you can pay for the parking with the mobile phone - just send the SMS with the licence plate number, and you're good.
They are switching to this system in Arlington, Virginia, too. Reasons for the new system:
1. No "left over" time. When you pull out, the next person pays in full, even if you overpaid and had extra time when you got back to your car.
2. Fewer old guys walking a beat with a cart that has a special mechanism that the meter collection boxes will dump into.
3. Accepts credit cards.
4. Automatically gives you a receipt.
Item #1 obviously benefits the city, to the detriment of us parkers. (Could benefit tax payers, if politicians don't waste the extra money.) Item #2 is definitely a reduced cost, as long as they don't turn around and add more meter readers, which could benefit us the tax payers.Item #3 is nice, since I never carry change and only have it in the car if I specifically collect it. Not sure who'd take advantage of item #4.
http://www.ci.des-moines.ia.us/headlines/smartcard.htm
In Des Moines, Iowa, the regular parking meters are being replaced with new ones that can accept parking cards that you load up with money. You place the card into the meter and wait until the preferred amount of time is paid for, then remove the card. Now, here's the cool part: when you come back to your car, you insert your card and it refunds the unused time back to the card! No more paying for extra parking time!
5. Now that they accept credit cards, they can raise rates whatever they currently charge when you pay with coins, up to significantly higher rates (I mean, it's hard to get people to pay $4.00 or $6.00/hr with quarters)? I'm guessing significant rate hikes will be following soon, if they didn't raise the rates immediately when installing the new meters. Also, I notice in one of the main article links, that some of the meters are now billing 24/7/365 - in the past, evenings and weekends were typically free. Just that alone makes this a significant 'rate hike' on parking meters.
6. Automatic/Semi-Automatic ticketting? They don't really advertise this as a 'user-friendly' feature of the meters, but I'm guessing these 'smart meters' make it so that, pretty much, you'll never get lucky and avoid a ticket/fine. Go 15 minutes over the amount of time you bought? Tough luck - you owe $50 parking ticket. (You know, I think this might bring up an interesting potential legal argument - in the past, large fines were accepted by courts because, in the general case, cities could not get a 100% ticketting rate, so tickets were to discourage people from cheating the meters in the first place; but, if you now have meters that are impossible to cheat, wouldn't $50 fines for parking violations constitute an unconstitionally excessive penalty, if the 'actual damages' from not paying enough to the meter were just a few dollars?)
These meters have been all around downtown Baltimore for a couple years now and while I agree that the round-trip to the ticket dispenser is annoying from an efficiency standpoint, it's still FAR better than coin meters if only for the sole reason that they take credit/debit cards. I don't keep change in my car (great way to get your car broken into in some parts). I haven't deliberately carried coins in my pockets for probably a decade.
The biggest problem I've had with the electronic meters is that you can't add time to an existing ticket. You have to either pay more in advance to 'make sure' you won't run out of time or you'll end up paying double for overlapping time. If I return back early and there's significant time remaining, I usually take the ticket back to the dispenser leaving it in the credit card slot or similar visible place so the next person can use it.
What do I really want? I'd like for people that touch my car while parallel parking to get an automatic citation. Let me decide whether to wave the fine or not. Hooking parking into the EZPass system would also be nice, so the parking spots know when I'm there, I'm automatically microbilled, and a ticket is no longer necessary.
Cheers!
Sean
Ok it's just dumb in today's world to have to display the ticket on your window to show that you paid for your parking. With technology today why not use the license plate of the vehicle. You park, walk up to the box, pay for your car using your license plate. The transaction gets entered into a secure database that the meter police can access. All they need is a small camera to read the license plate, which are already available, and then the system would query the database to verify that the car still has time left on it. If it doesn't then they would get a ticket. Of course if the system screwed up the person that parked there car could take there receipt to the place where the fines are paid and show proof that they paid.
When I visit Singapore, Every car has a "Meter" in it with a Card. This card is a pre-paid card and each time if you are in a parking garage or so, its auto deduction. NO time lost.
Its pretty smooth.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
Disclaimer: US Citizen, only been to Canada on vacation. We were in the 'Niagara on the Lakes" area a few years back and they had parking meters with credit card swipes and 1-800 numbers on every parking spot. I remember commenting to my wife about how convenient that was. I'm guessing the meters were connected via LAN or something.
I live in the Washington D.C. Area and I have never seen these "smart" meters. I do know that there really is no reason to have those new ones. The only one I heard here was that they stop wasted time from the leftover. The fact is that the government gets the same amount of money either way! The Chicago meters website says that "create more parking spots and sidewalk space per block" and "promote parking turnover, promoting availability." Supposedly, this is "imperative" for "a fair chance to park." ("Imperative" is pretty strong language; it sounds like their saying we'll all die without them!)
1. How in the world does it make sidewalk space?! The meters aren't exactly taking up half the sidewalk.
2.A cheaper way to increase parking spots would be to increase the amount of parking meters, not cut them all down!
3.You want to know what "parking turnover" means? It means the government is getting more money from parking, by either increasing the amount of people parking and thus paying(see #2 on how to do that more easily), or increasing the parking fee. And judging by one link, it's probably the second.
4.Finally, if the government is to be believed and there are more parking spaces, they are encouraging people to pollute by making way for more cars. (In fact, that is a problem with the gas tax: even if it was originally meant to discourage gas-guzzlers, it means the government wants more people to drive, so it can milk its cash cow more.
"Obviously, you need to be an Einstein to navigate the Austrian Patent Office website." - platinumrat
This company makes a fantastic on street meter: http://ipsgroupinc.com/
Chicago's transit is better than most cities in the US, but private cars are in wide use - far more than in Manhattan. Banning them outright would be impractical...but while reading through the comments for this article, I kept thinking to myself, "It's Chicago, just don't drive if the meters bother you that much."
ya know this has real potential. It's a good way to stimulate the economy and improve the quality of life for people everywhere. I never did understand the logic behind making drivers pay to park on the street that their registration / tax dollars already paid for.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Cellphone. Photo passive wallplate near parking bay. You already entered your car number into the phone. Send composite to some magic number, maybe with a time. Get back a "$XX for Y minutes Y/N?" type Y, $XX charged to your phone account (unless you set up separate billing). Also sets an alarm on your phone "Parking runs out in 10 minutes". Repeat process on return to car, if desired, for refund of unused units.
Requires co-operation of phone operator, who will be happy in return for a slice of the gross. Does not require financial types. No expensive hi-tech left on street..
75-year tie in to today's technology. Sheesh!
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
In Portland the ticket dispenser will allow you to continue to add money (coins anyway) without adding time.
Say you are in a "2 Hour Maximum" spot, and you add coins up to 2 hours, it will increment your time and show you visually how much you have paid for in a completely fair manor. But if you add more coins beyond your limit it will accept them without increasing your time. You can see it is not incrementing the time and cancel the ripoff, but how many even notice?
This was true as of 2006...
I come here for the love
Wait forever behind people who simply don't understand the technology
Try to decode the screen which is only showing 1/2 of the data
Guess at how much each hour is worth
Wait forever while the super-slow modem tries to verify your card
Walk 1/2 back to your car to pull out quarters because the card reader is (jammed with gum | not working | claiming to work but not printing a receipt and/or failing silently)
End up with 5 tickets printed for a minimal charge, all concurrent in permitted parking time.
These are in the bucket with bathroom hand-drying solutions - sometimes, the simple, non-flashy, non-automated old technology just works best.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I don't know about Chicago, but the blocks in Portland are small, at most you have to walk 4 car lengths to get to a box. I'm not sure about you, but walking 8 car lengths out of my way (to the box and back) does not really tax my time or physical endurance. Consider it 2 minutes of exercise for the day.
Toronto spent an enormous amount of money replacing all the parking meters with new versions that claimed they could tell if a car was there. If you pulled out, it would reset the timer so it could bill the next guy. After a few months it became obvious the system didn't work as advertised, and every time someone ran into one it cost some ungodly amount to replace them. After a year they pulled them all out and replaced them with the same system being decried here.
Actually I think it's a great system. I don't know what the author has against walking a whole 1/2 a block, but I don't see that as a problem. On the upside, the system allows you to pay by credit card, which is an enormous benefit. It also takes up much less space on the sidewalk, means the size of the parking spots doesn't have to be defined by meter spacing, broken machines wire in their status and are rapidly repaired, you can get the slip from the next machine if that one is broken, they have much larger coin boxes so they don't need to be serviced as often, there's only one per block which further reduced time-to-service, and to top it all off, they're solar powered.
The same basic system was found in London and Edinburgh on my recent trip. Everyone is moving to this system.
Maury
Imagine, whining and complaining about having to walk a whole half a block to use a pay and display machine! It's pathetic. Americans are so embarrassing, I am continually (as in ever single day of my life) embarrassed in new and unimagined ways by my compatriots! These machines work just fine in just about every other country. The only difference is, people aren't all fat-asses and can handle walking a few extra meters! I'm so sick of Americans and their whining. I hate parking meters, and whenever I'm in the U.S. I wish they had pay and display machines available. How people can prefer to use ancient technology is beyond me. Who the hell walks around with pockets full of quarters anyway? Americans, just bury your heads in the sand and please down come out!
The meters in Chicago just print off a receipt with a thermal printer and only in black. There are a few ~$100 portable thermal printers on the market that do an excellent job of printing similar receipts. I'm surprised that the private parking meter co's and the cities didn't make them more difficult to reproduce.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
There IS a time limit "implemented", that's the POINT. You're supposed to vacate the spot afterwards.
If you show up with extra coins to feed a meter that you already parked at, in particularly congested areas, you may be breaking a law against meter feeding, and for a good reason. You've used your time and it's time for you to get out. Cities don't meter parking spaces just to make money; they want the SPACE back. They might have to set the meters up that way, since IIRC standard meters do support feeding. In general a jurisdiction might allow feeding. But not all do, and aside from the mental retardation of the politicians in charge, other considerations intrude such as the congestion in the area, the average time to find parking, the average time a car remains parked at a meter, and the rate of meter feeding.
When someone ELSE feeds a meter, illegally, it's just as bad as if the owner of the car did. Cities don't meter parking spaces just to make some money; they want the SPACE back. This isn't like someone spotting you rent on an apartment. You aren't "renting" the space; the whole business with the coins isn't nominally to make money, it's to harass people who park cars into leaving before long. The meters would retain their function if they took something like cigarettes instead of quarters.
I've never had to wait in line to use one of these boxes so to infer that is actually a step in the process every time is misleading.
You are missing the point. They make it difficult on purpose in order to reap the real revenue: parking tickets.
Parking appears to be the only variable-cost good or service we sell and make people prepay for. It's stupid.
Imagine if gas pumping was that way. You want to fill your tank? Okay, pay us however much you think it's gong to cost, and then start the pump, which you cannot turn off. If you go over, you pay us a fine, if you are under, you don't get a refund.
It's utterly absurd. What we should do is figure out who is in what parking space, and just bill them for their time there. Simple as pie.(1)
We could do this in a variety of methods, such as people swiping their credit card before they drive off, or people purchasing RFID cards that sensors can pull money off of.
Or camera-vehicles that read license plates driving by every thirty minutes, where you could link your license plate to a CC number and be billed automatically, or you'd just be mailed a bill.
There are a lot of options, but it seems every 'modernized' city parking system has entirely different goals, like not letting people 'steal' time from previous parkers and making every single person walk half a block to pay instead of having a single meter-reader walk down the entire street. And make as much money as they possibly can.
1) And, as an added bonus, you can actually enforce the 'two hour parking' rules if you know who is where. Right now, people can just go out and reset their meter, whereas a system that knew what car was where would even be able to stop you from moving your car two spaces down. (Which you are not usually allowed to do...time-limited parking is almost always for the entire area, you can't move around inside it and reset it, legally.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I live in Portland and this isn't a bad system. The only thing I saw about the summary that was at all annoying was the price. If it was $2(or so) for lunch like it is here, it'd be great.
Yes, you may have to walk "Up to" 1/2 block there and back--we do it all the time. Generally that equates to 2-3 car lengths which is not much more annoying than a parking meter, and it takes credit cards so you don't have to have change (I'm MUCH more likely to be carrying a credit card than $2 in change).
He also didn't mention the fact that that the time is good anywhere in the city, so if you have to make 5 stops over 2 hours, you can just put 3 hours on your parking sticker and park/drive/park the afternoon away....
If the 1/2 block thing really hurts that bad, you probably need the walk anyway.
I was just up in Berkeley where they installed these things everywhere. They are awful. Totally user hostile.
At least in Berkeley some enterprising constituents will neutralize these things. They'll disappear, or all somehow stop working. Amazing how that happens.
These things are obviously the brain child of some MBA twit who's only responsibility was to show the ROI to the city, or in the case of Chicago, the investor.
Parking on public streets is a public resource and must be managed as such. As it is now, it's seen as a revenue center. You know what bureaucrats; "They're OUR friggin parking spaces! Get out of our way, out of commerce's way, let us use them. and do your job of keeping the spaces rotating, period.
In Montreal the system is similar, however you don't have to leave a paper receipt on your dashboard, because the parking people use a wireless device telling them which parking spots are paid for and which are not. It works.
There is a weakness: after you've paid and walked away, if someone enters a small amount of money for your parking spot, it will reset your time, so you can get a ticket even if you paid for more time. But at least with the purchase receipt you can contest the ticket.
lucm, indeed.
I have a completely different problem with the "modern" Parkeon(tm) parking meters installed in Seattle and Portland. Let's suppose they are installed at a reasonable distance (mostly true), that they work consistently (connection failures about 1 time in 5 during busy hours, and machine failures about 1/20). It's nice having the convenience of credit payment, but not nice when the city claims previously free parking areas. Lots of pro and con; sometimes it's nice to have a receipt. But those receipts got me thinking.
The problem is... waste. Permit some geek musing: You're supposed to buy a 2in x 3in sticker for every 2hrs of parking. Assuming the city installs meters in places where the spaces are occupied 90% of the time (vacant no more than an hour a day), this means 4.5 stickers a day for each space, which is 4.5x12sq in (of non-degrading sticker paper or plasticized backing paper) = 54sq in (.375sqft) of trash per day. Each parking space is, on average, SMC 23.54.030 says a medium space is 8x16ft, which is 128sqft. So it would take 341 active days of one space to cover itself with its own waste. The meters are active 6 days a week, which means in real time, the introduction of the Parkeon system means every parking space in the city is entirely covered with NEW non-recyclable paper trash every 56 weeks.
I started out with this as an idle musing, but now I'm pissed. SDOT claims they manage more than 12000 street parking spaces, which means about 1.4 million square feet of new litter in the city each year. What f*ing moron thought this was a good idea? We were far, far better off with the inconvenience of having to carry a roll of quarters. I know we just threw out our overtly car-hostile incumbent mayor (garnered 25% in the primary; buh bye Nickels), but I still want to put my foot up someone's ass for creating a constant rain of garbage all over my city.
I think not...(*poof*)
We can use our iPhones Any cell phone (with internet). "Theres an app for that!" Also, I have seen parking garages that you input your parking space number and pay and it has a multiple meters around the hospital to get more time if you run out. No need to go back to car the data is stored in computer and attendant does not need ticket diplayed to see if time is gone.
I've just visited family in Tel Aviv. Here;s how it works there:
1. Pre-pay and register with the city
2. Park your car
3. Call/SMS a predefined number with your car license plate (I guess there's also a web interface).
4. Go. do stuff. come back.
5. Repeat step 3.
6. Drive away.
It's that simple. My brother (who lives in Tel Aviv) loves it.
Easy. Simple. Works.
Just choose the "Bill me later" option. Don't bother wasting time with the meter, just walk off. When you get back to your car, someone will have already placed the bill on your windshield.
> Any other ideas?
Different politicians? I'll grant you, though, that "leasing" away city things for cash to spend now is an interesting way to borrow from your children without looking like you're borrowing from your children.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Where I live in Victoria Canada there is massive problems with old meters being stolen. At any given time about half the meters are headless because someone has stolen them. Parking becomes interesting as first you look for a 'free' spot, and failing that one that still has a metre. The city is now replacing them with a centralized system like that mentioned in the story.
Parking, much like traffic policing, has become a pointless profit generation scheme that addresses no real problem and "creates jobs", which in scientific language is called "inefficiency".
I say: free public parking for everyone. There is no scarcity, people aren't going to drive up from Mexico to steal your free parking spots. Nobody likes parking meters, except for the bean counters and the city execs shunting those funds to pad their frivolous budgets and buddy-buddy handouts. Meters do not reduce the problem of congestion, and they are a great inconvenience to everyone who ever has to go downtown to buy stuff or meet someone or go to a goddamned restaurant.
Paid parking is the textbook implementation of passive-aggressive behaviour. More hoops, more bullshit just so you can avoid getting a ticket from the city you're supposed to own, and the government drones who're supposed to represent your best interests. Just get rid of it all, and tell all those meter maids to get a real job.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
1. duct tape a plastic bag over the meter
2. take a picture
3. bring the picture to your ticket hearing, object to your ticket by explaining that the meter was "broken".
4. Stop complaining, ya cheapskate. You don't pay for parking ever anyways, who are you to complain about "wait time" (which, I must say, Iv'e never hat to wait at a smart meter, even though they are a tad inconvenient)
Howdy. We have them here in Winnipeg. Pros: more payment options than coinage (bills and credit cards are accepted). Cons: not quite as convenient and not really designed for cold temperatures. In particular, when it gets cold, the LCD becomes unreadable. When it gets really cold (i.e. less than, say, -25C), the boxes simply fail. We had quite a few days last winter when the city had free parking (due to the boxes not working).
linquendum tondere
Speaking as a near-Portlander who's used the meters there:
1. Line? There aren't *that* many parking spaces along a block. The only way you could get a line is if the block were empty and everyone showed up at the same time.
2. Being able to use a credit card is a vast improvement over not having the change you need handy.
3. I'm told Portland's blocks are smaller than most cities, but the meters aren't *that* far away.
They're vastly superior to the ones Corvallis (where I actually live) which you go up to, enter the space you're parked in, put in coins only, and get no proof that you actually paid.
Aren't the rules clearly spelled out, though? Don't you accept those rules by parking in said spot? And the city probably spends lots of money to provide a place for people to dispute their tickets.
You seem rather stuck on this. You have yet to make a compelling argument.
Are you a small business owner in a big city? (It sounds like you might be.) Do you know a small business owner in a big city?
It sounds to me like your problem isn't meter feeding at all, but availability of parking. Care to refute?
(Note: "criminal" activity next door is not a parking problem, it's a law enforcement problem. There's a big difference.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Add Denver to the list of stupid cities. Oh, and they also use this parking meter system.
As a Chicagoan (who drives, no less), I don't mind the new parking meters. Yes, the rates have gone up. Yes, the city government gave up a lot of revenue by leasing out the meters to a company who raised the rates, rather than having the balls to raise the rates themselves.
But, I can now use bills and credit cards to pay for the meter, which is infinitely more convenient than having to have quarters on hand. The meters themselves track the hours of operation and inform you *up front* about whether you have to pay or not -- if it's 7:30am and the meters don't go into effect until 9:00am, you'll be informed and if you pay anyway, the time you'll buy still starts at 9:00am instead of 7:30am.
However, the biggest thing I like is that I can actually find parking now. Back when parking was $0.25 an hour, you could park your car there all day for $2.50, which is what everyone did. Now that it's (shock) $1.00 an hour, most people just go for the lot. Even downtown, where it's $4.00 an hour, the upside is that I can find a place to park if I need to do some quick shopping.
And for people who complain that the left over time is wasted -- nothing stops you from taking your slip and putting it on/near the parking box for someone else to use if you've got a significant amount of time left on it.
The Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO) sued the City of Chicago this morning, charging that because of the meter deal taxpayer money is illegally being used to benefit a private company, Chicago Parking Meters LLC. You can click on to the Chicago Reader blog story here...
http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2009/08/19/ivi-ipo-sues-the-city-over-the-parking-meter-deal
Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke of the Chicago Reader have been excellent investigative journalists uncovering the corrupt parking meter fiasco. What it comes down to is the meters being sold off for peanuts ($1.5 billion over 75 years is nothing), and the public's right to know trashed. Clauses in the meter contract have been said to inhibit transportation innovation in the city. If one wanted to expand bike lanes or add streetcars and needed to remove meters to facilitate that, the city would have to pay LAZ/Morgan Stanley for lost revenue. Here's a link to their blog postings on the Chicago parking meters...
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/ArticleArchives?tag=parking%20meters
And hats off to the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO), finally someone steps up to sue the City of Chicago. I'm becoming a member today...
http://www.iviipo.org/membership.html
http://www.iviipo.org/
You would think the poster of the article would have actually, I dunno, read the articles before baiting the audience with the last question.
1) There is no one complaining about the lines with the new parking meters, and in fact there is only one article that even comes close to criticizing the parking system. That is the second to the last link.
2) The actual point of the original article is not "these new meters are stupid" but "hey, look, you've just contracted with a private company that can now revoke our driver's license" which has understandably gotten people upset. In fact, people are more worried about this than the new meters.
3) I can think of a better way to pay for parking once you and everybody else stops complaining about the 1/2 block walk to and from your meter. It's. A. Half. Block. Walk. It is five minutes of your time there and back. Would you like to pay more in parking prices to eliminate the walk? The smart meters can be dropped on a block where old parking meters were at without upgrading or changing how things are done. The ParkMagic system requires account creation, account services, technical services, technical infrastructure, etc. which is more expensive than a digital upgrade on an old idea:
Old idea: Money in decentralized system put in meter = parking. Put in money, print out ticket, put on car window.
New Idea: Create an account, wait for large item in mail to arrive, put large item on dashboard advertising you have a parking account (which is guaranteed free parking for a quick smash and grab), use a phone to call in to add time to the meter, have phone connect to a server, have the server call out to your specific doodad, and have your doodad increment the parking.
Which do you think is cheaper/easier to implement?
Great idea - if you were a crackhead and you knew there was a one-in-five chance any given car had twenty bucks in it, you'd be livin' large.
Such meters (horodateurs in french) are widely used here in Europe and are accepted as an alternative to individual meters. Really, to a person here the original complaints are ludicrous: a) "..walk half a block" - wow, not only an inconvenience but may cause the need for new clothes due to fat shrinkage! b)"wait in line ..." - how many cars turn over per minute in that 1/2 a block? Usually there is nobody in line, of course. c) "pay .. $84 ..." - the complaint is about the machine or the price of parking? d)"wait for " - if this guy is average the Chicago resident must be pretty busy; printing takes under five seconds. e)"place on dashboard, etc., probably passing the Paybox a second time" - whew! More exercise.
Really, fella, get a life. You probably spent more time typing the posting than you spent in the past month walking to and waiting at a meter.
As for better ways, I always liked the approach of a sticker one pays for by the year, together with a clockface card put on the dash to indicate the time parked (with large fines for finding a clock set ahead). For those casual parkers who use the system more rarely (and tourists), the current approach is not very burdensome, the poster's arguments notwithstanding.
So long as the credit card reader works, the Chicago meter seems to be a reasonable approach.
The solution is obvious, tie it in with your electronic toll-road pass. If a city has no (or is not near to another with) toll roads, it probably doesn't have *that* big of a downtown parking problem, either.
and it's not nearly as bad as the sumary says.
The only real complaint is that the double + bill for the spot.
I prefer the old meter system where every spot is leased on time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on