Tragedy of the commons
Leah Garchick’s column in today’s Chronicle contains a bit about a new trend she has uncovered in the city: people leaving a handful of quarters with shopclerks and asking them to feed the parking meter.
To her credit, Garchick reminds readers that feeding meters is illegal; the maximum time on the meter is the maximum time you are permitted in the parking spot, not a renewable lease. And in response to the recent entry here by KathyMe, who says that getting a ticket even once a week is cheaper than the monthly rental on local parking spots, I remind readers of one of the favorite saws of the NYT’s “Ethicist” columnist: a fine you can afford to pay is not a license fee. If the city could afford to rent people street parking for $25 a week, there would never be an open parking spot in the city again.
But I’m not one of those superior people who say get a bike or take Muni. I have a car, too, and for most of my errands, I have to use it. So what to do?
- Initiate a sexual liaison with someone near that workpace/train station/yoga class, and trade sexual favors for off-street parking.
- Carry dollar coins in your car instead of quarters; SF parking meters accept them. (Getting dollar coins is another matter; most banks don’t stock them regularly. The answer? Take a couple of ten-dollar bills into the nearest Muni Metro station, where the change machines dispense dollar coins.)
- Unless you’re injured or otherwise disabled, it’s really no big deal to walk four blocks from a parking place farther away, no matter how heavy your laptop is.
- I have surprising luck in city-owned lots, like the one on 24th St. in Noe Valley. Sure, there are meters there too, and sometimes you have to wait for a parking spot — but at least you’re waiting in the lot instead of blocking the street while vulturing, and furthermore, there’s no question of who’s in line first for a parking place, unlike a city street where anybody puttering along might slide into a spot no matter how long you’ve been waiting for it. Then you’ve got a situation. No, the lots are the way to go.
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Yeah, remember that clown in Santa Cruz who got busted for feeding meters? And if they enforce in Santa Cruz…
That wasn’t a slam, he really was a clown. No, literally.
And nice ethicist reference - though I usually find those sorts of columns littered with questions the correct answer to which is generally “if you have to ask . . . ” - the practical realities here do support that view.
I not sure just where I learned this, but have you heard that San Francisco may get the new Wi-Fi Meters? The city will be able to manage its parking meters over a wireless network. Parking meters could take credit cards, or users could pay via their cell phone thus eliminating the need for sexual hankey-pankey and/or a pocket full of change.
I fully admit that part of living in an urban environment is accepting that car ownership is often an inconvenient “luxury”, so I view the fine as more of a luxury tax rather than a license OR a permit.
Sometimes I put money into other people’s expired meters just to be nice. There you are walking by with a pocket full of nickels.
The problem with tickets is forgetting to pay them & very quickly they become insane, doubling, tripling, out of all realistic boundaries.
Wait, you’ve found meters that still take nickels? Dammit, I’m so tired of this quarter-only bias. I know that you only get a nanosecond per nickel, but what the hell do I do with all this other useless change?
As for the problem with tickets, that sounds not so much like a problem with the *ticket* as with the person who need to do the *paying*.
At a tel-hi community meeting the other day this guy bragged about his parking meter cards. Some downtown meters take them - sooo cool. You charge up the card and then slide it through the meters. Oh that US change is for monkeys.
on other things: love the new coin redesigns.
For a while, the city tested out card-reading only meters on my office block, and I nearly had an aneurism. Apparently, due to similar freak-out feedback, they’ve made them duofeed, cards AND coin. The card is convenient, so I recommend getting one, but it does require you to pay the $20 upfront, which is the city stealing your interest. Grrrrrr.
Anna - must you work those annoying neighborhood names into each post and comment? I think you mean Telegraph Hill, but who knows. Honestly, it is cute, but it must stop.
She’s not just working them into her posts. She actually talks that way. You don’t like? Don’t read. Slamming others in public forums doesn’t make you the people’s voice, it just makes you a crank.
I’m constantly amazed by how low-tech things like parking meters are in the US. In Auckland, NZ we have parking meters that can accept credit cards - or you can send a text to the meter and pay that way. Granted, it’s only in the central city at present, but it’s a long way ahead of a pocketful of quarters!