You are not logged in.
I just heard a story on KUT that suggests the city plans to phase out parking meters in favor of multi-space kiosks. Under this scheme, motorists walk to a kiosk that serves several spaces on a block, the kiosk prints out a pass, and then the motorist walks back to her car to display the pass on her dash. It sounds like a hassle to me, but the story suggests drivers prefer it, perhaps because the machine accepts credit cards.
http://kut.org/items/show/14738
What does this have to do with cycling? Well, the parking meters are going away. I've read that cyclists in Seattle and other jurisdictions have complained because they lose a lot of posts for locking their rides. Since bike parking is scant in several areas downtown, like Sixth Street, I wonder what impact this will have on cycling downtown.
Rather than stand in the way of progress, perhaps this is an opportunity to get more bike racks installed downtown. They have to do something with all those stump poles or holes in the ground, so why not install racks when the meters go out?
I'll ask those who follow City Hall closely, has there been discussion of what happens when the meters come out?
Offline
One other thing that this does is eliminate the charity that drivers have been indirectly giving to the next driver that parks in their spot. If there is any leftover time, the new driver now has to pay for a completely new hour or so to park there, since they will not have the stub that proves they paid for the spot. They use this scheme in Galveston I believe.
Offline
[ Generated in 0.013 seconds, 9 queries executed - Memory usage: 528.67 KiB (Peak: 529.3 KiB) ]