Parking Meters

 For a couple years I've been pondering why parking meters fill me with primal rage. Like a wolf growling at something in the night I sensed something afoul. Deep inside in the instinctual subconscious of my mind parking meters have left a mark. Only recently have I been intellectually capable of expressing this issue linguistically. On the outset they seem rather mundane. Like traffic lights and speed limits they seem to be a means of controlling drivers and cars in cities, as well as grease the wheels of union retirement funds (if you know what I mean). However I came to realize they are insidious to the core. I believe parking meters are designed for evil.

The current official premise of parking meters is that they are intended to expedite. In fact numerous courts have ruled that using meters for revenue would be illegal. However this does immediately make one wonder why, if only meant to expedite, does the meter charge at all? And if there’s no “revenue” in all this money, how exactly can the city afford an army of meter maids to enforce “expedition”? Obviously this is a lie we all conveniently ignore. Parking meters make a hell of a lot of money, that’s why they’re robbed so often. However it isn’t the charge for the meter that really brings in the cash, it’s the exorbitant fees the city gets to charge if you fail to pay the meter.

I believe it is truly one of the sickest ideas a government can have. When punishing the public becomes a financial benefit, it becomes an incentive to further punish the public. Society has just resigned that talking on a cell phone while driving might cost you hundreds of dollars in fines. Politicians meanwhile want a second home for their mistress in Maui, so every year they’re going to propose raising fines. But while there might be some minute inkling in your head that perhaps fines at least discourage potentially dangerous behavior. There’s really no explaining away parking fines.

You violate parking rules, put absolutely no one in danger, perhaps inconvenience no one, maybe even only park for a few minutes, and you can be hit with a world of shit the likes of which you didn’t think possible. The city gets you for parking, they can ruin your life. Hundreds in fines? That is nothing. Wait until they get their mob thugs to come steal your car and hide it in a lot somewhere without informing you. If you play the game of hide-and-go-seek well enough and figure out where your car is being held hostage, you get to find a way to get there, and then pay a shit load of money including extra penalty fees for all the time it took you to find the car and get to the lot without a car. Plus they can steal all your possessions in the car and say “What money? Or if not stolen, imagine going to the beach, leaving your wallet and cell in your car and coming back to find your car gone. What can you do? Didn’t park illegally? Too bad dipshit you can’t fight it if you want your car back. Lose that fight? Now you’re probably out of a job and have racked up hundreds more in storage fees from the kidnappers.

That’s how San Francisco is run. They have private tow truck drivers who can drive around the city and take whatever they want back to their lair and don’t have to inform you of shit. Then they fine you, and if you want your car back, you have to admit your guilt and pay through the nose. Nice system you have there. I’m sure it’s all about keeping cars coming and going.

Speaking of San Francisco I remember New Year’s eve going to SF to work a concert. It was in the civic center, and the streets were completely full for half a mile in every direction. We had to pay quite a fee to park to work 4 hours at minimum wage. While in the meantime of looking for a parking spot we drove along a street with literally dozens of parking spots (all taken of course) however there were also a couple small paper signs up stating that this street was going to be closed for parking on New Year’s Eve. The signs probably hadn’t been obvious to the dozens of most likely tourists who had foolishly believed driving to San Francisco for a party would be a good idea. San Francisco hates you. And every aspect of their government is designed to fuck tourists. Well, as it was, also on this street of dozens of sadly “illegally” parked cars were 4 meter maids and two tow trucks two maids and a truck on each side of the street, writing out dozens of tickets and hauling away dozens of cars. No doubt hundreds more were written up and stolen in the next couple hours. The spiders were getting their feast. I remember mentioning at the time San Francisco was just securing its budget for the new year. San Francisco does this all the time. Particularly during special events. They wait until the streets are full of parked cars , of people who were likely there to spend hundreds helping the economy, and then the city decides coincidentally to cancel parking. Of course they don’t tell the tourists in advance. They don’t even post a notice in advance (except perhaps in some Hitchhiker’s Guide fashion). They wait until day of, then they bring out small paper signs, or road cones, whatever, and after all the spots are full, bring in an armada of meter maids and/or tow trucks and ruin people’s days. It’s literally millions of dollars for the city, and everyone feels good about it. Serves you right asshole. How dare you show up to a concert in the park, park in a legal parking space, and then expect a tow truck and meter maid to not show up and tag team you for hundreds or thousands of dollars. Fuck you.

 Of course not all cities are so blatantly evil. San Francisco truly is the heart of darkness and I could probably write a paper on all the ways San Francisco punishes tourists. But that doesn’t excuse every other city in America, and around the world for just meter fucking people, and certainly other cities are vying for top spot in the darkness competition.

 They claim it’s to expedite parking, however handicapped people are entirely exempt. Not only exempt from paying anything (which alone makes no sense), but exempt from time limits. Handicapped can park all day. Also, they just hand out placards to city employees in San Franc-aaahh OK, back on topic. If expedition is the reason, why do handicapped people have no time limit? I quote the following from the CA DMV website: “There is no time limit with a DP placard, DP license plates, or DV license plates.”

Maybe we’re just that liberal. Fine. Your wrist hurts, you get a placard, you can park anywhere for free forever. Fine. That’s the welfare state for you. But oh if that were the only exception. Of course every city vehicle can park everywhere forever for free. Sometimes there are limits, but they’re never enforced. Fine. City employees are special too. But surely this is still about expedition, and maximizing parking space availability, you know, other than the ones taken up by handicapped and city staff. But I’m sure none of those people have any reason to be parking downtown… no wait that’s pretty much exactly where they all park all day. But surely they don’t take up “too many” spots, and this is puuuublic “property” so there are still plenty of spaces left for the tax payers.

I just have a few more questions. If parking fees are about expedition;

- Why is it illegal for someone to “top off” a meter that isn’t theirs? If the person is away, it won’t mean they return any faster whether or not someone feeds the meter without their knowledge. All it really does is prevent the meter maid from levying a massive fine. I’m sure there’s another reason though. :P

- Why do meter maids ticket vehicles of people who are only going “in and out”? If it’s about speed, why is it really necessary to levy a massive fine for parking for 2 minutes?

-Why do parking meter costs differ place to place in the same city and continually rise at obscure rates and so that would take a mathematician to understand. It’s like tennis scores with these machines. Sometimes 1 quarter is 15 minutes, sometimes it’s 10, sometimes the first quarter is more time than the second and even more than the third. If this is about expedition why does it seem they are gamed to trick you into paying too little, thus enabling that meter maid who’s just rounded her one block of duty to come 5 minutes before you and levy a massive fine?

-Why is it that the city of Santa Monica, just for example, has a new meter that banks all your money if you pull away and immediately sets the timer to zero? It’s your money. What possible reason could they have to bank this money that belongs to you and wipe your meter to zero? How in any way would this make parking more “available”? It’s almost as if it does FUCKING NOTHING TO MAKE PARKING BETTER AND IS JUST ANOTHER WAY, IN A LONG HISTORY OF WAYS OF PULLING OUT EVERY LAST FUCKING PENNY FROM EVERY PERSON THEY CAN GET THEIR GRUBBY FINGERS ON.

One of the first days of visiting Berkeley I drove to Cal and parked a few blocks away in a residential neighborhood just south of campus. There was no meter, no markings on the curb, no sign near the parking spot. I walked north and visited my soon to be school for maybe half an hour and then came back to find a $50 ticket. They did have parking meters, but being Berkeley, they were “collective” meters (yeah it’s a stupid joke, but you’d laugh if you love me). See if I had any fucking idea these things existed, I might have paid. But being NEW. And a few blocks from a university that takes in thousands of new national and international students…blocks away…………………you see where I’m going with this right? Their obscure meters, located maybe one every 5 cars and looking nothing like a parking meter, might just happen to catch hmmm hundreds or thousands of students each year. All paying $50 for their lesson in civics. Of course if they’re like me, maybe they tried to pay online, and maybe it took their payment, and deducted it from their bank account, but some “magical” error occurred and it didn’t remove the ticket. Requiring them to pay again. So I paid $100 dollars to park on PUBLIC PROPERTY 3 blocks from my campus to buy a fucking hat from the Cal store and walk back, having parked a half an hour, in the summer, in a residential neighborhood. WHAT THE FUCK DID THAT $100 HAVE TO DO WITH GOD DAMN EXPEDITION OF POPULAR SPOTS IN BUSY AREAS??!!!!!

But never mind all that, and riddle me this one last question. Let’s say I’m wrong about all of this. That this really is about expedition and not revenue. And that all those fees and fines and meter feedings and ridiculous laws, and corrupt exceptions aside, they all serve to make parking “more available” when it becomes a premium? Well let’s look at Berkeley one last time, and maybe we can extrapolate this to the rest of America, because it’s not a Berkeley exclusive by any means.

-Why is it, if this is all about keeping the line moving, and making spots available, that say, past 5 PM in Berkeley and on weekends (sometimes just weekends in other cities, Just Sundays I believe in San Diego). You know, those times when downtown popular attractions are at their peak usage for precisely the kind of people who want to be “in and out” of parking spaces (as opposed to downtowns during working hours on weekdays, when no one is going “in and out” but are looking to put in 8 hours), these meters all of a sudden become free and parking times become U-N-L-I-M-I-T-E-D?

Now, I have no idea why they make the parking free to begin with. I mean they already have their victims over a barrel. Maybe they just get off on letting citizens think they are somehow civilized in having designated free hours. But what about the unlimited parking time? All of a sudden, when there’s no meter, there’s no meter maid. They evaporate at 5 PM and recede into the ether. These times, when it’s free, and the downtown is actually buzzing with people coming to do a little shopping here and there, not just to work, all of a god damn sudden, all the parking spots are plugged up, and nobody has to move. When demand is at its absolute highest, this monument of bureaucracy, this entire institution of funny little 3 wheeled cars and cops with nothing better to do, and chalk attached to rope, and round and round and round protecting parking spaces more securely than protecting citizens in bad neighborhoods and back alleys, this whole mammoth system disappears the moment when you think they’d be appreciated and desired the most, when everyone is actually looking to only park for a short period, and to go in and out from place to place. It’s almost as if… expedition and keeping spaces available has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH IT.

Meters exist for one purpose, revenue. Not alone, but with an army of people who generate revenue for the city, at a time when police are at a minimum due to budget cuts and a bad economy, and crime is at a maximum. There is no abatement for the meter maid patrol. They are so numerous they can cover every cash producing square inch of the city in less than half an hour, and fuck every single person who dares try to park for five minutes without paying a quarter, or who lingers for a second longer with their friends, thinking they are free citizens in a free society parking on public property they pay taxes to maintain, while supporting the businesses that the streets pass by. This has nothing to do with availability.

They will not ticket someone who spends 2 hours in a space and then moves their vehicle one space and spends another 2 hours there. They will however levy massive fines and bureaucratic bullshit at anyone who for a micro second isn’t paid up. They will bank your money and reset the clock to zero so the next guy has to pay too. They will watch you fumble for change, find none, walk into a store to get some, and ticket your ass before you even get out with the quarters. They will charge you the cost of a car, for parking an inch too far from the curb. They will arbitrarily close streets and tow away dozens of vehicles (after ticketing them) so the mafia that runs the city can jack every one of those people for tens of thousands of dollars in a single haul. This works especially in a tourist city, where people by definition don’t know the lay of the land, and in their ignorant desire to spend money in the city and help the economy, the city will fucking steal their cars and hold them hostage. Only, the tourist doesn’t know the car was towed, maybe they were parking all day, maybe it’ll be after 5pm when they walk to the curb and find no car, and maybe it’ll take them another day they don’t have to figure out it wasn’t stolen, and by then the city will charge even more money, because somehow it makes sense to fine someone for having stolen their car and effectively hide this information from them. And so hope the tourist doesn’t have to go to work the next day, or fuck them this one decision by the city to steal some cash might just ruin someone’s life. But that’s no matter to them. You can’t fight this shit in court.

Your neighbor’s tree might have an apple drop on your grass and you can sue them for millions and the government will put up with your shit and award you the money, but if they steal your car when you were legally parked, and then levy you with thousands of dollars in fees after making you lose your job, the judge will sooner release Charles Manson than even listen to you. We have in this country a system of automatic guilt. And it doesn’t take actual guilt, evidence, or even a government employee for this ruling to come upon you. A contracted private tow truck driver can steal your car, and if you decide you want it back, you are automatically guilty.

 The true danger is obvious. When government is able to derive financial benefit from harming its citizens, or inconveniencing them, or simply punishing them for slights, it creates a terrible incentive. Punishment becomes pleasurable. The incentive is to punish as much as often, in as many ways as possible, and this is precisely why new meters are always coming out.

If you doubt me. Start looking around. The inner wolf inside you might start smelling something funny too, growl at it sirs.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/us/santa-monica-resets-parking-meter-system.html?_r=0

Thanks to rant lord Adam Carolla for pushing me over the edge on this issue. I thought I was all but crazy for my hatred of meters until Adam brought up the Santa Monica meters and all I could hear was "gotcha" ringing in my head.