My OperaParking Meters
Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:52:51 PM
The editor had a chat with Hanny Chan (Old Dominion owner) a few days ago, and among other things he mentioned the new parking meter fees, and that they were affecting business.
He frequently gets customers who get their rental car at the airport and drive right to the Convention Center. That means, among other things, they might not have any change in their pockets and other things that are hassles getting through the scanners. So they come into the restaurant, get change, and go back out the feed the meter. In one case, when the customer was in, the meter mater was about to write a ticket, but hadn't yet. Customer goes out, explains to functionary that he just got change, starts to put change in, and gets ticket anyway. DC, the tourist city.
The editor understands. He plays poker Monday nights at a pub on Capitol Hill. There, they have those little print receipt for so much money kiosks. The parker puts the receipt on the front dashboard. Theoretically the kiosks take credit cards as well as quarters. The one on the block in front of the pub hasn't done that in recent memory.
Lets face it, eight quarters for an hour is one hell of a hassle. And that assumes that one has gone to the bank for a roll of quarters. The credit card option is thus a nice idea.
But credit card readers and the communications needed to verify are often dyspeptic. Nonetheless, we now have this from the DC government.
Suppose you are at a meter, in the middle of a hard rain, and the credit card reader doesn't work and you don't have change. Do you call in the meter, wait on hold for a while, and get a "control number" or something, and proceed to your destination? Do you get back in your car and try for a working meter, assuming any other parking places exist? Just drive over to Pentagon City? Good question.
And while they've doubled the fees for parking, the meter minders must have had their (perhaps non-explicit) quotas doubled, too. Life is tough all over.
Meters are not just for making money. They also serve to force turnover of the parking places. We now have a lot more open parking spaces on the 1100 and 1200 blocks of Ninth Street than before the changeover. There seem to be an awful lot of DC tags at Potomac Yards these days.
He frequently gets customers who get their rental car at the airport and drive right to the Convention Center. That means, among other things, they might not have any change in their pockets and other things that are hassles getting through the scanners. So they come into the restaurant, get change, and go back out the feed the meter. In one case, when the customer was in, the meter mater was about to write a ticket, but hadn't yet. Customer goes out, explains to functionary that he just got change, starts to put change in, and gets ticket anyway. DC, the tourist city.
The editor understands. He plays poker Monday nights at a pub on Capitol Hill. There, they have those little print receipt for so much money kiosks. The parker puts the receipt on the front dashboard. Theoretically the kiosks take credit cards as well as quarters. The one on the block in front of the pub hasn't done that in recent memory.
Lets face it, eight quarters for an hour is one hell of a hassle. And that assumes that one has gone to the bank for a roll of quarters. The credit card option is thus a nice idea.
But credit card readers and the communications needed to verify are often dyspeptic. Nonetheless, we now have this from the DC government.
Suppose you are at a meter, in the middle of a hard rain, and the credit card reader doesn't work and you don't have change. Do you call in the meter, wait on hold for a while, and get a "control number" or something, and proceed to your destination? Do you get back in your car and try for a working meter, assuming any other parking places exist? Just drive over to Pentagon City? Good question.
And while they've doubled the fees for parking, the meter minders must have had their (perhaps non-explicit) quotas doubled, too. Life is tough all over.
Meters are not just for making money. They also serve to force turnover of the parking places. We now have a lot more open parking spaces on the 1100 and 1200 blocks of Ninth Street than before the changeover. There seem to be an awful lot of DC tags at Potomac Yards these days.
