Holiday Evil
Let me take some time today to spread a little holiday cheer, sort of. We have some new animals gracing our city streets. They started making some inroads last spring, and seem to be creeping around everywhere. Some call them necessary. I call them evil! Parking meters. These new ones have just a special degree of 'grinchness' (new word) to them. They replaced the old ones that you simply threw coins into and if you ran out of time, you might have gotten ticketed. These newfangled contraptions take only plastic, have you display the ticket on your dash, and if the previous user of the meter left 20 minutes still on the meter, tough luck. It ain't yours and you can't use it. Whenever a new user pulls into a spot, everything starts over. New user, new time, new ticket... and yes indeed, new plastic. Our town fathers want us to forsake the malls this holiday season and shop downtown? I'd say, with these suckers lining city streets, the call to local malls is a pretty strong pull. I call these a nasty evil.
"You're a mean one Mr. Grinch..."
Happy Holidays from the City of Portland!
I ususally hate parking meters; But this one seems to win the Oscar of the worst one!!How complicated!and someone somewhere is surely naming that " progress"...
ReplyDeleteNot only that, but you have to walk to the unit, which might not be right next to your car. Fun in the rain and snow.
ReplyDeleteI call it cheap, cheap and cheap.
Another way to suck money out of us.
oh, this is a sorry state of things.
ReplyDeleteWe started getting similar machines here in Tulsa a few years ago. I hate them.
ReplyDeleteSimilar ones in the U.K. for-ev-er . . . tho they take coins, not plastic.
ReplyDeletei like the old way better...they even look better.....
ReplyDeleteThese were introduced in Europe a long time ago. Not sure if they ever had the old coin meters. We also have them here in Toronto, but you can still pay with coins if you don't want to use your card. And they're very strict with parking here. My husband has been ticketed for being 5 mins over. Makes for an expensive outing. :S
ReplyDeleteWe have a few lots like these around town and I fell exactly the same way. Even my closest mall has put in a metering system on one side of the mall. Guess where I always park, the other side.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a devilish design; certainly not in the holiday spirit. Don't go too far, tho, Birdman; do not forsake the small shop owners who are still downtown...the best kind of shopping.
ReplyDeleteSo if you ain't got no plastic or don't want a fee for putting 50 cents on your card you can just keep on trucking? That stinks and you can tell the muckety mucks I said so.
ReplyDeleteV
shoot, there's enough of an issue with credit card thieves installing readers inside gas pumps and the like. i'd hate to see what they'd do with parking meters out there unguarded...
ReplyDeleteLooking at your pic, this machine will take coins or plastic - and only $1/hr! We have these machines here too and I like it when running a bunch of errands on 1 street since I buy time and move the car several blocks along the street a few times until I run out of time. Better than the old 1 spot meters.
ReplyDeleteI'm so used to them I could work any of them, regardless of the language. Last week I spent 1 1/2 hours at a meeting in central Paris, cost me almost 9€ (about 11$) to park the car...
ReplyDeleteTake me to your meter!
ReplyDeleteWarm Aloha from Waikiki
Comfort Spiral
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Very timely. I got a parking ticket in the Old Port on Saturday (I will be paying $30 for 1/2 hour of parking) but it was in an old fashioned zone. Yesterday for the 1st I confronted a new- fangled gizmo on Commercial Street, but it did take coins. Some one said that Portland is developing into a city than is not inviting to people: in terms of parking that is true true true. And in terms of not having benches too...
ReplyDeleteSeattle has something similar... whatever happened to putting in a coupl'a quarters??
ReplyDeleteBirdman, you cheapskate. They cost $2 max for a couple of hours if they are like the ones in Hartford. Not even the cost of a grande Pike. Pay up!
ReplyDeleteWe have the same ones there and they are a pain in the a&&.
ReplyDeleteYou got that right. You see these meters in more and more of the US. They're all over Europe. It you don't have a credit or debit card, tough rocks. It's like the airlines that do not accept actual money for food and beverage purchases (only up there you can't drive to the mall). Plus the print is so small and the instructions so complex you can't possibly read them in the dark. A plague on all their houses.
ReplyDeleteWhere were you complainers when the City Council (or whatever bureaucrats) were planning this? They didn't sneak them in on you did they? They had to have at least 20 meetings about them.
ReplyDeleteStella
We do get a choice at least, thank goodness, I'm paranoid about where I use my cards!!
ReplyDelete