City parking fees: too clever by quarters
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The city has increased public parking fees, extending meter enforcement hours and lowering the amount of time your quarter buys. This has made a lot of people very cross. And by "cross," I mean "ready to pull a parking meter out of the sidewalk with their teeth, chew it up, and spit the shrapnel through the windows of the City-County Building."
But I'm not one of them.
Mercy, no. I think higher public parking rates are a brilliant idea. The pension fund needs to be bailed out, of course, but aside from that obvious benefit, the rate hike brings so many other gifts.
First, and most laudably, the rate increase creates jobs. The parking authority doesn't have enough people to write you the ticket you so richly deserve for being trapped in a salon with your hair in foils or watching the end of a play, so it's hiring 14 new employees. More enforcement means no loss of revenue just because it's 9:54 p.m. or you've had to beg quarters and show up two minutes late. Busted!
High parking costs will impress visitors that this is a first-class city. Parking meters in Manhattan can gobble as much as $3.75 an hour, because Greenwich Village real estate isn't cheap. I hear street musicians are replacing the open guitar case with a credit-card reader.
I'm also delighted that the biggest increase in Oakland is at the meters around Schenley Park. Who parks there? Slackers loitering in the park, that's who! If people would stay out of the park, they'd be more likely to do something productive with their time and less likely to tear up the grass. Instead of playing Frisbee with your kids at taxpayer expense, why not buy them a Wii and contribute to the economy?
Students park there too - and we need to stop kissing up to get them to stay in town after graduation and just sock them for every penny while they're here. A blizzard of parking tickets may not turn them into bus-riders (especially if there aren't any buses), but it ensures that wherever they go to have their careers and families, they'll always remember Pittsburgh.
First Published July 28, 2011 12:00 am
