To Reset or Not to Reset…
(Even Shakespeare might have a problem with this conundrum. Should on-street meters be reset when the vehicle leaves the space? I set off a firestorm on my PT Blog in late May and thought I would share some of it with PT magazine readers. I have heavily edited the statements and responses here; to see all of the piece, log on to
www.parkingtoday.com and click on PT Blog. Scroll down to the May 23 post with the same headline and it’s all there. JVH.)
The City of Santa Monica and the City of Los Angeles are installing sensors in on-street spaces that will reset the parking meter to “zero” when the vehicle leaves the space.
Officials claim that it is to affect parking policy, and not to be used to help enforcement. Ya, right.
I was asked to participate in an LA-area radio program discussing this issue, and listened to caller after caller decrying the sensors and griping about the new policy. “It’s like winning the lottery,” said one caller. “You pick up a few minutes and you think ‘Wow, a little something good happened today. …’” Virtually all callers felt that this was simply a way for the city to “grab” more money.
Many also discussed the morality of the situation. A person pays for an hour and leaves after
reset to “zero” is needed to ensure that we get the proper turnover. Fair enough.
However, how about the PR the city receives when the parker So how does applying that same principle to real
estate on the street make us morally bankrupt?
40 minutes. Why is it wrong for the next person to park for that “extra” 20 minutes without having to pay?
The purpose of metered parking is to create turnover for local merchants. It is to keep residents and workers in the area from taking spots. Rules against “feeding” the meter prevent this type of activity.
If one buys the maximum amount of time, then to keep turnover working, you are enjoined from putting more money in the meter. So the
gets a few minutes of “free” parking by piggybacking on someone else? It seems to me that this is a small price to pay if we have the technology to allow piggybacking but also ensure turnover. We should remember one other thing: When we change to a pay-by-credit-card meter, most people pay the maximum anyway, whether they plan to stay the maximum time or not. Revenue skyrockets for cities because of this. Other benefits of the new meters is the “up-time,” and the fact that the meter can notify the city if it is having a problem and can be repaired quickly. The downtime in the city of LA is very low, less than a few hours at most.
Are we really so concerned about every penny that we reset the meters? I’m told that after a few weeks, complaints about resetting die away and “all’s right with the world.” But I wonder … People remember a kinder gentler time when folks put a quarter in a meter to keep a stranger’s car from getting a ticket, or when police warned merchants that the enforcement patrol was coming so meters could be fed or cars moved. If a city is so financially tapped out that every little bit needs to be wrung out of the citizenry, isn’t something else wrong? When parking policy becomes a “tax,” instead of a way to affect behavior, are we moving in the right or wrong direction? JVH
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Parking Today
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