Feeding others' parking meters

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
So, re-feeding someone’s meter so they won’t get a ticket isn’t necessarily a kindness toward all the other people who want to park there but can’t find an available spot.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, but the car will be there, preventing other people from parking in the space, whether you feed the meter or not. The police are ticketing, not towing.

lonih, if someone is planning to stay in the same spot beyond the meter limit, they’re either feeding their own meter or making a conscious choice to risk a ticket. It’s not like they’re counting on meter-feeders to enable them.

Unless you’re picturing a scenario where someone runs back to their car in a panic, planning to feed the meter just as it’s about to expire, only to find that it’s been fed by a stranger. “Whew,” the owner of the car thinks, “I was only going to stay for another fifteen minutes, but now I can relax for two hours!”

[QUOTE=Magiver]
It’s really just that simple.
[/QUOTE]
I disagree.

22

[QUOTE=shimmery]

I disagree.
[/QUOTE]
I would disagree with your opinion on why you disagree but you didn’t post a reason. I explained my opinion of the success of malls versus city shopping. Cheap/convenient parking is a huge draw. And by huge I mean BIG HONKING REASON. You can park FREE in the back-40 of a mall and still be closer than most parking in a city. And then there’s the subject of this debate, the ever-present parking police.

23

[QUOTE=Magiver]
I would disagree with your opinion on why you disagree but you didn’t post a reason. I explained my opinion of the success of malls versus city shopping. Cheap/convenient parking is a huge draw. And by huge I mean BIG HONKING REASON. You can park FREE in the back-40 of a mall and still be closer than most parking in a city. And then there’s the subject of this debate, the ever-present parking police.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I disagree that it’s “that simple.” The reasons why are the subject for another thread, since it’s .. you know .. not that simple.

[QUOTE=Magiver]
Cities benefit when they recognize the need for low cost/convenient parking. Cities that don’t are the driving force behind new malls. It’s really just that simple.
[/QUOTE]

I read this as a claim that the failure of cities to recognize and cater to America’s automobile-based lifestyle is the driving force behind suburban sprawl. Is this unfair?

24

[QUOTE=shimmery]
I read this as a claim that the failure of cities to recognize and cater to America’s automobile-based lifestyle is the driving force behind suburban sprawl. Is this unfair?
[/QUOTE]

Malls aren’t necessarily suburban. Strip malls tend to be suburban in nature but the classic, self-enclosed all-in-one big building mall originally was the creation of cities and you still see many of them in large cities.

When a developer with enough money puts a shopping mall into a city, the city doesn’t get any money for all the hundreds of people who park in that mall’s parking garage. At the same time though, they very well may get more money as city malls tend to have more businesses per/sq. ft than a traditional city street (malls more easily stack businesses one on top of another across multiple floors) and businesses = tax payers.

25

[QUOTE=shimmery]

I read this as a claim that the failure of cities to recognize and cater to America’s automobile-based lifestyle is the driving force behind suburban sprawl. Is this unfair?
[/QUOTE]
You’re close. Automobiles represent freedom and with that freedom comes choice. The level of convenience represented by mall parking versus the time and trouble of feeding meters to avoid paying fines is a no brainer.

26

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
Malls aren’t necessarily suburban. Strip malls tend to be suburban in nature but the classic, self-enclosed all-in-one big building mall originally was the creation of cities and you still see many of them in large cities.
[/QUOTE]
Cite? Also, do these city malls offer free parking? If not, I think they’re irrelevant to this debate. Even if I agree that the first enclosed shopping malls were created in cities, how does it follow that “cities”* created a situation that drives consumers out of cities to malls with free parking? Note that I assumed that Magiver was describing suburban malls only because he (she?) placed malls with free parking in opposition to city shopping with inconvenient parking, and explained that the latter would cause cities to lose tax revenue. ETA: Magiver’s post also explicitly specifies suburban malls.

*(and really, can we get more specific? City government? City planners? Private developers working in cities?)

[QUOTE=Magiver]
You’re close. Automobiles represent freedom and with that freedom comes choice. The level of convenience represented by mall parking versus the time and trouble of feeding meters to avoid paying fines is a no brainer.
[/QUOTE]
Okay, I think this is a correct reading of the current decision-making process facing a car-owning suburb-dweller who needs to go shopping. But I strongly disagree that it’s cities that have created this situation. I haven’t spent much time in GD before - am I allowed to cite books and articles? Should we start another thread?

ETA: Magiver, I know it annoyed you before when I just said “I disagree” without supporting reasons - but I need to know more about your position before I can present a solid counter-argument.

27

[QUOTE=shimmery]
ETA: Magiver, I know it annoyed you before when I just said “I disagree” without supporting reasons - but I need to know more about your position before I can present a solid counter-argument.
[/QUOTE]
My position is that cities who use meter tickets to generate revenue will lose money doing it. If I go to a city to spend money then my answer to a ticket is already parked in front of the meter. I’ll go somewhere else. Problem solved. It’s an addendum to the topic but I thought it worth mentioning.

If you punish a person for being nice then you’ve alienated 2 people for the price of one. Some problems have easy solutions. Shopping elsewhere is the natural reaction to a bad experience.

28

[QUOTE=shimmery]
Cite? Also, do these city malls offer free parking? If not, I think they’re irrelevant to this debate. Even if I agree that the first enclosed shopping malls were created in cities, how does it follow that “cities”* created a situation that drives consumers out of cities to malls with free parking? Note that I assumed that Magiver was describing suburban malls only because he (she?) placed malls with free parking in opposition to city shopping with inconvenient parking, and explained that the latter would cause cities to lose tax revenue. ETA: Magiver’s post also explicitly specifies suburban malls.
[/quote]

Firstly there was nothing in the first post of his that you quoted which suggested he was talking exclusively about suburban malls:

Nothing there suggests suburban or urban shopping centers.

Some of his later posts could be construed to suggest what you’re asserting (that he claims lack of parking drives the creation of suburbs.) But even that is a big stretch, he claimed lack of parking creates new malls–without specifying whether he meant suburban strip malls or urban shopping centers.

My only problem with your statement was what I viewed as your general assumption that mall = suburb, which just isn’t the case. The post of Magiver’s that I’ve quoted here is the one that caused you to start down that road and it said nothing to suggest suburban versus urban shopping centers. That’s quite possibly what he meant, but nonetheless it isn’t what he said at the time.

Are you realistically asking for a cite that shopping malls originated in cities and not suburbs? No offense, but that’s ludicrous. Do you really think shopping malls are an invention of suburbia? The suburbs are relatively new, the earliest suburbs can be traced to the 19th century, before that exurban communities can’t realistically be called suburban. And large, self-contained shopping centers inside cities (which have existed prior to suburbs for about 5,000+ years) date back millennia. If you don’t consider the ancient, self-enclosed bazaars and marketplaces to be an early form of the shopping mall well, look at the Oxford Covered Market, the Burlington Arcade (in London) or “The Arcade” in Providence, Rhode Island. All of them urban, all of them clearly meeting the definition of malls, and all of them dating back to the late 18th or early 19th century, predating the development of suburbs in general.

Whether or not urban malls have free parking, in my experience, tends to vary from place to place.

29

Okay, but I don’t think this definition of “mall” is relevant to this discussion. The point I was trying to make about Magiver’s post is that we’re talking specifically about “malls with free parking” - which I, perhaps mistakenly, assumed to be primarily found and perhaps invented in the suburbs.

30

[QUOTE=Hippy Hollow]
I suspect the real motivation behind parking meters is to actually generate revenue through ticketing. .
[/QUOTE]

I agree. Here in Silicon Valley we have San Jose: zealous meter maids, who will swoop in seconds. 2 Hour limits are rarely enforced. San Jose has the crappiest Downtown retail in the area. San Jose also make a lot of $$ from the tickets.

Next door, we have Palo Alto- with no meters but rigorously enforced 2 hour limits. The downtown shopping area is the best in the region.

Now, in theory San Jose has free Downtown parking- in certain area at the fringes where you have to park in spookey and poorly secured multi-level lots. Women are scared to park there.

Magiver is correct. But the reality is that SJ just pays lip service to the idea of Downtown shopping- they give many special benefits to the large malls located in the suburbs.

Thus, I feed meters whenever I see the Meter-maid approaching. I carry a supply of nickels for just this purpose.

31

[QUOTE=lowbrass]
These high-tech measures seem silly to me. I’m sure it makes sense to bean counters to spend X dollars on high-tech equipment in order to net Y percentage of additional revenue, but when money is used for no other purpose than to obtain more money, it seems wrong. Let’s say, if I pay the city $5, and the city uses $1 of that $5 to buy technology that will get them an additional $2 from me, they’ve made an extra dollar, but have essentially wasted $1 of my money.
[/QUOTE]
But part of the purpose of the high-tech machines is enforce the “only 2 hours” for which there are more reasons than just addition revenue.

32

[QUOTE=shimmery]
Okay, but I don’t think this definition of “mall” is relevant to this discussion. The point I was trying to make about Magiver’s post is that we’re talking specifically about “malls with free parking” - which I, perhaps mistakenly, assumed to be primarily found and perhaps invented in the suburbs.
[/QUOTE]

Absolutely not. There are certainly shopping districts and malls in the city with free parking. The difference is one of scale, however.

If you switch this google map to a hybrid view, you can see a pretty representative free parking lot for a “mall” within the Chicago city limits. Granted, the streets interrupt the buildings and I don’t think it’s all owned by one landlord, so we might quibble over whether it’s a “mall” or not, but it’s undoubtedly a designated shoping district without a lot of residential living anywhere nearby. There are a ton of great stores around this intersection: Whole Foods, Transitions Bookplace, Crate and Barrel, The Container Store. Trader Joe’s (woot!) is nearby and a jillion other nice but not horribly expensive places to shop. It’s about 7 miles away from me. I almost never go there. Why? 'Cause there are about 1/700th the parking spots needed, free or otherwise, and it’s too congested to get anywhere and if you actually want to go to more than one store and drop your huge packages off in your car, the parking jackals try to take out your kneecaps for not vacating the parking spot when you come within 10 feet of your trunk. They did put a parking garage in under the Whole Foods a while back in an effort to address the parking problem. Can’t say as it helped, though. I’m honestly baffled as to when they could have taken that picture and had so many spaces open in the lot just above and to the left of the arrow in the link - my only guess is fairly early morning before everything is open.

This (again, switch it to hybrid or aerial photo - sorry I don’t know how to link to it like that) is the closest suburban open-air mall, Old Orchard. See the difference? It’s got acres of parking, In fact, a few of those “buildings” are stacked parking structures, so there’s even more parking than it looks like. And this is a pretty old mall, in a really compact space, that people complain about the difficulties parking at. This mall, in Orland Park, is the quintessential Suburban Mall, with more real estate devoted to parking than to stores! (Zoom in to get a real idea of scale. I grew up by this mall, and I’ve NEVER seen its lots full, even during the height of Christmas shopping. You may have to park very far from the door, but it’s never full.)

Guess where I go when I need a book? Sorry, Transitions, you’re a locally owned independent store, and I’d like to support you, but the Barnes and Noble at Old Orchard has a place for me to leave my vehicle while I shop.