I’m guessing this one could go to GD in a heartbeat, but I’ve noticed that frequently there are no parking meters at parking spaces dedicated to handicapped parking. I have little beef with leaving a spot open for someone who has difficulty walking the length of a parking lot, or a street, but I don’t know why he should be exempt from paying for use of the space. The two issues are unrelated as far as I can see. Is there a factual reason that being physically handicapped should exempt a person from being obligated to participate in the financial requirements of vehicle ownership in any particular city?
At least in California, physically disabled people are exempt from time restrictions for parking. (This also applies to green spaces.) Depending on the disability and the car, it can take from no extra time to a lot of extra time to get in and out (and to run errands, for that matter).
So it’s not so much that they shouldn’t pay, it’s that the per-minute billing doesn’t apply and nobody has bothered to legislate a separate, flat fee for disabled parking.
Possibly, the city is afraid of running afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act by using inaccessible parking meters. There have been some lawsuits filed alleging exactly that.
You know, that makes a certain amount of sense. But it seems that all that would be needed would be a meter that would give a person, say, 2 1/2 hours for the same amount of money that the rest of us pay for 2 hours. Better than the zero income that the spot provides now. But I see the point.
And ANOTHER good point. Man, I love this bbs.
It’s also a bit harder to run out and put change in the meter every so often.
And though it’s somewhat philosophical, the state may be officially willing to give a break to a class of people wherein many have economic burdens from medical expenses and somewhat limited income opportunities.
Considering this is illegal in most areas (even if it’s very rarely enforced), it probably wouldn’t be a concern for the agency responsible for parking.
Really? So, if I’m at a 4 hour meter, and I want to park for five hours, it’s illegal for me to run out after three hours and put a few more quarters in? I’m supposed to move my car out and back into the spot?
Learn something new every day.
Actually, you probably need to move to another spot. Sometimes the laws are written so you have to move as set distance away. Public parking in commercial areas are usually set up to allow customers to access stores. If a few cars are using the spots all day it defeats the purpose.
Yes. In our town, they wrote language into the laws to keep the merchants and their employees from bogarting the parking spaces by running out and feeding the meters all day, thereby keeping the other drivers, i.e. spenders, from occupying those spots. They’d get to the spots early in the day, of course, feed the meters, and then squat in them all day, keeping the hard to find parking spaces even harder to find. No more, baby. Now they have to move their cars once their time is up. The meter men in their little cars come around with the chalk on the stick and mark the tires. We balance our city budget using revenue from meters and tickets.
My understanding for the rational is that people that can park in the blue spots don’t have a choice in parking close or not. For example, here in Boulder, CO, a lot of people want to go to a shopping district or whatever called “The Hill.” There are parking meters all over The Hill and about a block into the residential neighborhoods surrounding The Hill.
If I wanted to save a couple of bucks I could easily choose to avoide paying for the fees and just walk the two extra blocks. This would be significantly more difficult for someone in the handicapped spot; in effect choosing to save the two bucks or not isn’t really an option if the blue spaces were to have meters. That’s why the blue spots don’t have meters.
Now, riddle me this: why does the CU Boulder campu have a parking meter at every single handicapped spot? Because the Parking Services Administration is a bunch of bastards, that’s why!
How long you can park varies with municipality, and probably with how parking signs are written. In some places, you can stay all day so long as you feed the meter. In some, you need to find a new spot once the allotted time runs out (e.g., “2-hour parking/9am-4pm”). In Washington, D.C., (40 years ago, and probably still) when time is up you need to find a new block, or different street.
I know in Arlington, VA, that meters used to be free and no time limit for the handicapped.
But after Virginia DMV noticed that the number of handicapped license plates being issued was going up greatly (people were getting certified as handicapped because of varied “disabilities”, but it was a lifetime designation; they’d park near work for free on the street, but their co-workers had to pay a premium for garage parking), they installed more disabled spaces, but put meters on them.
Additionally, they put stickers on all the regular meters’ poles stating “All may park, all must pay”.
Seems strange that they would jump to the conclusion that there was fraud going on and then punish everybody, fraudulent claimant or not. Wouldn’t it have been wiser to fix what was quite likely a broken system? Over here when it became apparent that there was widespread fraud going on with regards to disabled parking permits the whole system was overhauled and new guidelines issued to General Practitioners. As I remember it there was also a brisk trade in stolen and forged disabled stickers (ours are stickers and badges that afix to the window, rather than licence plates). The old orange ones were replaced with blue ones and new rules as to where, when and for how long they could be used were put into place.
My late mother qualified for disabled parking when her cancer spread to her bones, it was a lifeline for her and my father (who drove her, and fetched prescriptions and shopped for her and two small children). Makes me angry thinking about people who rip off a system that is so important to people who are so unfortunate (not to mention people who seem to think everyone with a badge is pulling a fast one).
I read that in the city of Berkeley, CA police officers recently instituted a sting operation where they monitored handicapped spaces, and gave tickets to non-handicapped people with placards.
At least in San Francisco, the revenue generated by parking citations is vastly larger than the revenue generated by meters. I’m not exactly sure how this bears on the OP, but to me, it kind of divests the issue from fairness.