The perfect parking meter? August 11, 2007
Posted by Al in : clever,design,motoring , trackbackLiving within 5 minutes walk of the town centre, I hardly ever have to pay for parking. But sometimes I need to drive into town to carry a large or heavy item home, and then I might need to pay. I don’t have a problem with paying to park, although paying over £1 for an hour seems a little steep to me, but I hate that feeling of low-grade worry you get when you know you’re approaching the limit of your parking, you’re not quite ready to go back to the car yet, and you’re unsure whether you should head back to the car to avoid getting fined, or whether you can risk an extra 15 minutes to finish your trip.
This new parking meter cures that problem, and a few others too, as it offers the option of automatically renewing your payment without you having to rush back to the meter. It also allows a period of grace, during which you can return to the meter and pay for the period you have missed and the remaining period of your parking; and just in case you forget the time the meter will remind you that your time is up.
Sounds like an excellent idea to me – I wonder if councils will be prepared to lose the parking fines they now collect, in return for better payments from parking meter customers. I’d guess they might actually stand to increase their revenue, as they wouldn’t need so many traffic wardens, but I guess that will be up to the council to decide.
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Sunday night about 9 p.m., we saw at least 5 parking meter tiekct aides dropped off at the intersection of Belmont/Lincoln/ Ashland. Apparently there is a lot of tiekcting going on at all hours. This will wreck small businesses. Empty metered spots everywhere.If people can’t park, they can’t patronize businesses who depend on street parking.