Municipalities are struggling to find ways to increase revenue without increasing taxes, and this is one way they landed on it, by getting rid of the free parking that used to go along with mechanical meters. And apparently needing you to do something that almost every person who owns a car does these days, either wear a watch or carry a cell phone (either of which can tell the time for you).
This outrageous behavior has led to this thread, denouncing such creative attempts at revenue generation. The GALL of cities to expect everyone to have to pay for their parking, instead of getting free time off someone else! The horror!
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.
I’m at a park. Someone I trust not to horrid things to an apple leaves one behind. It looks like a pretty rad apple so I shout “you gonna eat that?” as they leave. They respond “nah go for it”.
Like the abandoned meter time should I leave the apple to wast like the parking minutes because someone else bought and abandoned it? Would I have a lot of GALL to eat the apple?
What if it was just an abandoned apple that likewise I knew was safe and abandoned?
What hassle? Being able to pay with a credit card instead of having to use coins is already a bonus, IMO. Plus, I’m all for anything that reduces costs for the city – that’s our money they’re using to pay those meter readers with, you know.
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.
The city was already making money on the old meters. Charging for parking isn’t a net cost for the city, it’s a net revenue.
And it’s questionable to me whether the new system nets them more revenue. I wonder what the CC transaction fee is? If it’s structured like PayPal, then it’s a percent plus a flat charge. If someone incurs a sixty-cent parking fee on their card, and transaction fees eat up 50 cents, then the city is getting far less revenue from its parking spots than it used to. Maybe it works out OK if there’s less maintenance (one computer and a bunch of numbered signposts, versus a bunch of individual meters) and less manual labor involved in collecting coins, but man, if a lot of people are paying by credit card, that’s a big loss of revenue.
We recently got this same type of system in my little town. I don’t mind them too much, but my favorite part about the whole thing is how environmentally-friendly my town council likes to consider itself; they are really vocal about how “green” our town is.
…So they go from meters with no waste to a system where hundreds of little pieces of paper are printed each day, a good chunk of which seem to end up in the streets. Good work, guys.
First of all, what the fuck does .65/1.20 refer to? I understand that the meter costs $1.20 an hour, so are you trying to calculate how much you need to pay to park for .65 of an hour?
No wonder you have a hard time with your watch. It’s in metric time.
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?
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?
True. But i literally do not know a single person under 40 that doesn’t carry a cellphone. I was the last holdout in my peer group, and even i have a cheap one now.
And my (undergrad) students? Fuggedaboutit! Those people can’t walk the length of a room without texting or checking their messages.
And every cellphone on the market will tell you the time.
