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It’s All the Pilgrims’ Fault from Page 33


The concept of “bits of paper”


continues to this day. I point out to Peter that the


English were deeply involved in both of these transactions, and that if anyone is to blame, they are, not weYanks. Being a people who like to


follow our “free” spirit, we rebel at anything that smacks of overcharg- ing. In fact, parking nearly became protected in some amendment to the Constitution when James Madison complained to Thomas Jefferson that if there was to be a “bill of rights,” then one of them had to be that horses and carriages could be put wherever one wanted. Jefferson responded that in a


free society, it worked both ways, so if I owned property, I had every right to charge you to leave your nag, just as you had every right to leave it somewhere else. However, if a third party, perhaps the wench that Ben Franklin was telling them about that morning at the local beer hall,wanted to pay that fee for you, there was nothing wrong with that, either. So, the spirit brought forth by


Squanto’s brother-in-law in 1620 – he got the referral – held strong more than a century and a half lat- er, and now we proudly validate parking throughout the land. One of the problems that European parking equipment had


when they came to theU.S.was that they had no validation facil- ity. The concept was “foreign,” I say, without even wagging my tail. Typically in Europe, if one wanted to help with parking charges, the merchant would just give the parker a discount of a couple of francs, pence or marks, and that was it. No need to involve the parking facility at all.This omission was immediate- ly corrected. Here in the Colonies, we looked at it differently. In an effort


to provide service and to entice folks to park in one place and not another, deals were cut and merchants were enticed with dis- counts and other tokens of good will to give out coupons to their customers that offered lower parking rates (or even no rates) at certain parking locations. Then, after a few days of noticing that peoplewill react favorably to “discount” and “free,” validation of parking became a way of life. Of course, the parker paid for the parking, but just in a dif-


ferent way. If NeimanMarcus validated parking and Costco did not, one might assume that when you paid 10 times the amount for the same TV at NM than you did at Costco, somewhere in there might possibly be the cost of a $15 parking fee. But as you well know, folks don’t care much about that as long as it appears to be cheap. Americans are nothing if not clever.There had to be away to


34 MAY 2010 • PARKING TODAY • www.parkingtoday.com


offer this validation ensuring that the validating party (Franklin’s wench or Squanto’s wife’s errant brother) had a way to conve- niently mark the parking document and, more important, a way to track the fees so the parking facility owner could get reim- bursed.Thus, validation stamps were born. As with any other item of value, they can be lost, stolen,


overused and, yes, people even try to make a quick buck or two on the side.Validation stickers became more difficult to dupli- cate; they were numbered, and even slit so they couldn’t be reused. Mechanical validators came on the scene, and soon online devices that tracked each validation back to its originwere popping up in shopping centers and lawyers’ offices across the fruited plain. The problem, Peter, is one of scale. There are more parking


facilities in NewYork City than in all of Scotland,Wales and Ire- land, and if you do a quick count, you could probably add Eng- land (less London) to that number. That means that “upgrading” takes time and a lot of money. But technology is on the way, and my guess is that your fumbling American cousins will have it under control before you can say “boot” or “windscreen” or “car park” or “motorway” or “mobile phone.”


Woof! PT


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