# Fuck you, ultra-modern parking meter **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [June 23, 2010, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257 "2010-06-23T18:05:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/41 "2010-06-23T20:51:08Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > Right. > > Also, as most people understand, there are 60 minutes in an hour. And $1.20 is the same as 120 cents. > > So, parking is 2c per minute. > > Surely even a product of the American public school system should be able to work out how much to pay. The points I am struggling to make: - under the old system, I didn’t have to work it out. In this regard the new system is not an improvement, it’s a step backward. - the new system _could_ be cheaply designed to display time remaining, but does not; the information display does not display as much information as it could/should. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/42 "2010-06-23T20:56:09Z")
Actually that’s pretty cool. What they should do is have the meter box ask for your cell number and then send you a text message 5 minutes or so before it expires (optional of course, but that would be easy to implement and pretty sweet). ---
**Author:** ![Rhythmdvl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@Rhythmdvl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhythmdvl)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/43 "2010-06-23T20:57:39Z")
> [@crazyjoe](#): > > [T]his is one way they landed on it, by getting rid of the free parking … Yeah, all sorts of knuckleheads in this thread. Above all, everyone seems to be forgetting that free parking isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be in the first place, regardless of what your town may have “always” done. [Cite](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/454/what-is-supposed-to-happen-when-you-land-on-free-parking-in-monopoly). ---
**Author:** ![Westrogothia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@Westrogothia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Westrogothia)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/44 "2010-06-23T21:00:18Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > That’s a genuine question, not snark. I would assume the city (or private company abusing the drivers as the city’s proxy) would charge a fairly large minimum–$20, say–which would be reduced to match the parkers’ actual usage so long as they remember to do that second swipe. Or did you have a different plan? They charge on the second swipe. If you forget to swipe the second time the charge will be for the maximum time allowed (24 hour). thats how they work around here at least. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/45 "2010-06-23T21:19:04Z")
> [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](#): > > Back the fuck bus up. You really want more unnecessary hassle? Wait…where is this _fuck bus_, and what exactly happens on board? ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/46 "2010-06-23T21:40:48Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Wait…where is this _fuck bus_, and what exactly happens on board? It’s the circuit trace on your motherboard that sends the porn from your network connection to your monitor. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/47 "2010-06-23T21:53:18Z")
> [@Joe Frickin Friday](#): > > You’ve deposited 65 cents. Parking time costs $1.20 per hour. How many minutes can you spend drinking in the bar before you need to come out and move your car? Oh, that’s easy. I can spend 19/85ths of a day drinking in the bar and still have 1.2 x 10^14 picoseconds left to walk to the car. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/48 "2010-06-23T22:01:12Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > It’s the circuit trace on your motherboard that sends the porn from your network connection to your monitor. Is a motherboard some sort of computer thingie? I post here via palantir. Damn burning hands. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/49 "2010-06-23T22:24:50Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > There was at least a decent tradeoff with the old system. > > You always had to put in more money than you might need, in order to avoid the risk of getting a parking ticket. (Or you might get a parking ticket.) But OTOH, you might be able to catch the last 25 minutes that the last guy in that space didn’t use. > > These ‘modern’ meters break that implicit bargain, and that’s what I find bothersome about them. If you’re not ever going to get a free ride on the time someone else didn’t use, the least they ought to do is enable you to pay for exactly the time you use. > > If they’re going to have a centralized box, rather than paying at individual meters, it seems the logistics would be simple enough: swipe a credit or debit card when you park, then swipe it again as you’re leaving, and get charged for the time in between. > > Having to play guessing games about how much time you’re going to need, and risking a parking ticket if you guess wrong by too much in one direction, is really pretty silly when you think about it. It’s just that up until the past 15 years or so, there was no better alternative. Now there’s no reason why there can’t be. You don’t think that the city wants to give up dinging you with a $25 ticket for being three minutes late, do you? ---
**Author:** ![Delayed\_Reflex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/delayed_reflex/32/3172_2.png) [@Delayed\_Reflex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Delayed_Reflex)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/50 "2010-06-23T22:36:48Z")
They have this system here in Calgary as well, but at the same time them implemented a cellphone-based system - you can make an account with your cellphone and licence plate, then just call a number and type the 4 digit number to activate. When you’re done parking, call again and deactivate it and the system automatically charges you the proper amount for the time that you parked there. The system also emails/phones you if you’re running out of time (eg. parked in a 2 hour spot) in which case you can just call again to renew. You have to pre-pay to put money in your account and re-fill it periodically, but I have to admit it is quite convenient. The on-the-street machines suck ass though. ---
**Author:** ![BCHH](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/53a042/32.png) [@BCHH](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BCHH)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/51 "2010-06-23T22:55:08Z")
> [@Joe Frickin Friday](#): > > Quick, what’s 0.65/1.20? > > The old parking meters didn’t make me do this kind of shit. I thought technology was supposed to make things _easier_, not more of a pain in the ass. I didn’t come here for a goddam math test, I just want to park my car and go get drunk. > > Fergodsake, it’s a computer and a display - with plenty of unused space on the display. All you need is a couple of extra lines of code in the software to display time remaining. No new hardware required. Lazy goddam code monkeys. > > If they had done that, much of my rant would not be. Why do you need to know .65/1.20? It’s telling you what time it expires, right? It takes the math **out of it** and lets you know exactly when you have to move your car or buy more time. Why must you _also_ know how much time you just paid for. I might agree that the current time could be useful, but it’s not necessary as I believe most people are going to be wearing a watch or have a cell phone with the time. I see the “lazy goddam code monkeys” doing the users a favor with this method. If they had filled the unused display as you suggest, someone else would be on here bitching about “how goddamn hard it is to figure out what you’re looking at because of all the shit on the screen. They already tell you what time it expires, why do they need to tell you how much time that is?” Honestly, I don’t see this as a bad thing. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2010, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/52 "2010-06-23T23:51:44Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > How do you propose to handle people who leave without doing the second swipe? Easy. Much like an automated parking garage that is thankfully in my past. At it, you owed for the number of full hours between check-in and check-out, rounded up. Ten minutes or 55 minutes, you paid for an hour. 65 minutes or 99 minutes, you paid for two hours (the first hour was somewhat higher cost than each additional hour, sort of a built-in 20-cent processing fee). And so on. And if you didn’t do the check-out, you owed the overnight rate, equivalent to eight times the single hour rate. One such charge, and you didn’t forget to check out again. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/53 "2010-06-24T04:04:56Z")
> [@Giraffe](#): > > That depends on whether I’m calculating minutes or money, now doesn’t it? Given that you supplied no units, I could have just as easily overestimated. > > Also, I don’t tend to feed the meter to the second, so I don’t need to calculate things to three decimal places. If it says $1.20/hour and I’m parking for lunch, I’ll just stick $1.50 in there and call it good. So when in doubt round up? That’s always a good system to avoid tickets, but for people for whom money is tighter have to be more exact. Why not just include the time it expires and the time left, and make everybody happy? Assuming the city isn’t a bunch of crooks out to tilt the system into making money from over estimates and ticketed under estimates that is. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/54 "2010-06-24T04:13:51Z")
> [@BCHH](#): > > Why do you need to know .65/1.20? It’s telling you what time it expires, right? It takes the math **out of it** and lets you know exactly when you have to move your car or buy more time. Why must you _also_ know how much time you just paid for. I might agree that the current time could be useful, but it’s not necessary as I believe most people are going to be wearing a watch or have a cell phone with the time. > > I see the “lazy goddam code monkeys” doing the users a favor with this method. If they had filled the unused display as you suggest, someone else would be on here bitching about “how goddamn hard it is to figure out what you’re looking at because of all the shit on the screen. They already tell you what time it expires, why do they need to tell you how much time that is?” > > Honestly, I don’t see this as a bad thing. Yeah, I agree: In this respect the new system is BETTER. I’d rather know what time the meter expires, because with the old system that’s the first thing I figure out. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/55 "2010-06-24T04:23:04Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Wait…where is this _fuck bus_, and what exactly happens on board? > [@Bosstone](#): > > It’s the circuit trace on your motherboard that sends the porn from your network connection to your monitor. It’s also connects to [sexy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI#History) drives. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/56 "2010-06-24T04:24:18Z")
Attention! You have 5 minutes to move your car! . . . Attention! If you do not move your car immediately, it will be crushed into a cube! . . . Attention! You have 5 minutes to move your cube! (The Simpsons) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f07891/32.png) [@Little\_Plastic\_Ninja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Plastic_Ninja)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/57 "2010-06-24T04:28:53Z")
Yeah, I was a little surprised to see this rant. It does suck that you can’t ever ever ever get free time on the meter before five or six at night, but on the plus side, I don’t have to have change – but I CAN use all my change if I want. The little paper receipts are stupidly made and I’d prefer having a little parking-spot code number… or, better yet, put my license plate number in there! That and only paying for the time you use by charging when I leave and sending me a text when I have 5 or 10 minutes remaining would make parking awesome. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/58 "2010-06-24T13:38:07Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > How do you propose to handle people who leave without doing the second swipe? > > That’s a genuine question, not snark. I would assume the city (or private company abusing the drivers as the city’s proxy) would charge a fairly large minimum–$20, say–which would be reduced to match the parkers’ actual usage so long as they remember to do that second swipe. Or did you have a different plan? Depends on whether the parking spaces have those sensors that tell whether the space is occupied. If it does, then charge them to the time they leave. If not, charge them up to the next time someone starts paying for that parking space. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/59 "2010-06-24T13:44:05Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > You don’t think that the city wants to give up dinging you with a $25 ticket for being three minutes late, do you? But the city’s businesspersons also don’t want your overall shopping experience to be an unpleasant one. A few of those $25 tickets, and you find yourself shopping at the mall rather than downtown, because you don’t get ticketed in the mall’s parking lot. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2010, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257/60 "2010-06-24T14:01:15Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Not everyone wears a watch. I do, but a lot of younger persons don’t. But pretty much everyone has a cell phone and every cell-phone I’ve ever seen has a clock. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fuck-you-ultra-modern-parking-meter/544257.md?page=4)