The next time you're fumbling around for coins to feed the meter so you can run into Starbucks for a venti half-caff triple mocha soy latte with a shot, thank Carl Magee. In 1932, he invented the parking meter as a solution to parking problems in downtown Oklahoma City. As recounted in the Wall Street Journal, his invention was met with ridicule, indignation and lawsuits. For a while, it looked like the courts would side with the public. But greed civic responsibility eventually prevailed, and the "combination of an alarm clock and a slot machine which is being used for further socking the motorist" became commonplace. But it wasn't just motorists who had to pay. In 1936, San Antonio city officials forced farmers to park their horse-drawn wagons at what became a coin-op hitching post.
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As evil as the original parking meter may have been they’ve managed to make it even worse. I’ve run across meters that don’t tell you how much time is left on them. So if you aren’t keeping track you find yourself feeding the meter more than necessary or if you pull into a recently vacated spot you have to feed the meter because you can’t be sure the remaining time will cover your visit.
quiz: do you think it would be harder or easier to find parking downtown if there were no meters and people could leave their cars there 24/7? so do you really think parking meters per se are evil?
RF, can I put in a request for some subject-line tag to distinguish the brief news posts? (e.g. jalopnik labels them all “in brief”) I don’t want to miss the reviews and editorials, and it’d be easier to skip around if it’s obvious which ones to definitely read.
The city of Syracuse, NY has something even more evil than the conventional meter. You have to put money into a machine that spits out a piece of paper telling how long you’ve paid to park. You display the paper in the windshield. That way you can’t piggyback off of someone who overpaid and left time on the meter. Also, in January when it’s 5 below zero and you’re fumbling in your pocket for your last quarter and drop it in a snowbank because your fingers are frozen, you’d better dig it out or you will be ticketed.
What’s amazing is some of the new tech being placed in these things:
1/ Motion sensors to reset the meter as soon as you drive away, keeping people from piggybacking off your payment. see http://www.intellipark.com/
2/ Wireless communication that informs the meter-maid when your time runs out.
seattle’s implemented the paper-in-window thingies. the annoyance of not being able to piggyback off others’ leftover time is balanced by the convenience of not having to carry quarters, and of being able to continue using your time if you go park somewhere else.
wireless meter-maid informing though, that sucks.
They use the ticking vending machine here in Australia. You CAN piggyback off unused time. People with a lot of time left on their ticket will often give their ticket to others.