"Smart" Parking Meters Considered Dumb 863
theodp writes "The jury's still out on whether Chicago taxpayers were taken to the cleaners by a rushed 75-year lease of the city's metered parking to a Morgan Stanley consortium. But most would probably agree that the new shared Pay Boxes that replaced the city's old parking meters don't exactly live up to their 'Smart' billing. Here's what the redesigned 'user-friendly' parking solution looks like: 1. Park your car. 2. Walk up to 1/2 block to a Pay Box. 3. Wait in line to use it. 4. Use coins or credit cards to purchase parking time — up to $84 for 24-hours (add $50 if you run out of time). 5. Wait for a paper receipt to be printed. 6. Walk up to 1/2 block back to your car. 7. Place the receipt on your dashboard. 8. Head off to your destination, perhaps passing the Pay Box a second time. So before other cities suffer the same fate as Chicago, Portland, and others, is there a 'smarter' way? Some suggest the ParkMagic In-Car Meter, but no new orders are being taken in Chicago. Any other ideas?"
Re:Race Condition? (Score:5, Funny)
They fine you if you're black
oh wait
OP goes grocery shopping (Score:5, Funny)
1. Park your car.
2. Walk up to 1/2 block to store entrance.
3. Wait in line to enter and obtain a cart.
4. Pass the checkout counters and walk the equivalent of two or three blocks inside the stoor while manually loading groceries.
5. Wait in line to pay using coins or credit cards.
6. Wait for a paper receipt to be printed.
7. Walk up to 1/2 block back to your car.
8. Place the groceries in the car.
9. Head off to your destination.
10. Carry groceries inside destination.
11. Store groceries in various locations depending on consumability and shelf life at room temperature.
Embarassingly, it is already like this in Portland, Chicago and other cities worldwide.
Ridiculous! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh my god. I dropped my cheesy fries, ice cream and XXL soda and almost had a heart attack just thinking about walking up to half a block! Please resuscitate me when somebody comes up with a drive-through parking meter payment system.
Re:We have those in DC and.... (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like you got ripped off, so it worked exactly as designed.
There's a simple solution to this (Score:2, Funny)
Many years ago, some shops used to transfer money from teller to a main booth by wires. Clip the money to the wire, shoot it from the teller to get change and whoosh it would come back. That's what they need here, wires and pulleys. Put your money in a tiny little sack on a string and whizz it alone the wire and the machine would take it, spit out a paper ticket and then whizz the sack back. It'd be awesome for the first five minutes, then you can marvel for years about the crazy parking system that lasted five minutes and then was vandalized. Planned nostalgia.
How it works in Portland (Score:3, Funny)
The Three R's of Portland
or
Why Portland Sucks
"Latte Town" was coined a few years back and is the most appropriate term for the City of Portland that I have ever heard. A Latte town consists of mostly white, educated baby boomers and young single people. The inhabitants of the town are usually newcomers who have priced out all the original inhabitants. These towns are usually expensive, pretentious, abound in natural fibers and are laid back on the surface. Latte towns like Portland pride themselves on their most cherished concepts of diversity and inclusiveness. Most Portlanders accept this myth as Gospel but upon close examination Portland's dirty little secret is revealed. Portland is an overwhelmingly white, non-ethnic city. It is as vanilla as it gets so it makes one wonder what all the celebrating of diversity is all about. Drive through any neighborhood surrounding the downtown area and the impression that you get is that Portland is nothing more than a series of elitist ghettos compromised of rich white homosexuals, rich white yuppies, rich white hippies, rich white trust funders, and rich white kids from the suburbs pretending to be street people. Where's the diversity? Well it doesn't exist but the average Portlander likes the concept and in their eyes the different shades of rich whites all constituent diversity. In a series of articles I will attempt to breakdown and explain these subtle distinctions between the various factions of lily white, latte people that make Portland what it is.
The Artist-Intellectual
The visitor or newcomer to Portland is bound to be struck by the sheer numbers that belong to this group. They seem to be everywhere and are in fact everywhere. They are the reason that all the coffee shops have tables and chairs. The artist-intellectual fancies himself as a poet, a writer, a musician, a filmmaker, etc. You get the drift. They spend most of their days idling around the coffee establishments that one finds every 10 feet. They are usually equipped with a notebook that they use for their poems, journals or their artwork. No one ever gets to see the contents of these notebooks. More often than not they have a beaten and weathered paper back copy of some book authored by Kafka or William S. Boroughs. They love to discuss their favorite subject, themselves. Given the opportunity they will prattle on for hours about their poems, art work or the film they are making. You never get to actually see any of their work but you do get to hear about it. Their lives are like one never ending semester in grad school. Initially I believed these losers but then got to thinking. What would an aspiring actor, artist, musician, filmmaker being doing in Portland Oregon, a latte town? Why wouldn't they be in NYC or LA? Because they're phonies, that's why. Here's how it works with these clowns. They flunk out of college in New Jersey so their parents send them to Reed College in Portland in hopes that they will get their act together. They drop out of Reed but stay in Portland while still on Daddy's tab or some trust find. One Saturday Josh or Seth drifts down to one of the hundreds of hippie craft markets downtown. Some hippie is selling didgeridoos that he made I between bong reps. Josh buy one and takes it home where he proceeds to get baked after which he blows a few sour notes into the didgeridoo. The next day he's a musician. Not really but that's what he's telling everyone at the coffee house and pretending is good enough for a Portland artist-intellectual, in fact it's everything. In three months he will switch his designation from musician to filmmaker and then onto to something else 3 months later. As long as it sounds cool he will keep this charade up and no one in his circles will call him on it because they are doing the same thing.
The Activist
This group is usually comprised of people that used to be part of the artist-intellectual group in Portland. They have gotten a little older and may have finally, after 12 years, obtained a liberal arts degree from Portlan
Re:Sounds like a standard system to me (Score:3, Funny)
Walking half a block is a one-minute round trip. If you honestly don't have that much time on your hands, you might as well just double-park in front of the door at the organ transplant centre and worry about the tow later.
Re:The Vancouver Solution (Score:1, Funny)
The first time you use it, you have to register a license and your credit card number.
Jesus H. Christ -- just fucking exactly what we need -- yet another piece of shit technology so the goddamned cops and sonofabitch lawyers can follow your every move.
I'm sure the divorce lawyers are already jizzing their jeans waiting for discovery time. They already do this with automated bridge toll passes. "What a coup -- the bastard was parked in front of Madame Puta's Casa de Pussy when he told his wife he was working late on a contract. That should be good for another $2K a month for the bitch. Minus my percentage."
Re:It's supposed to be difficult (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Numbers spots inply painted lines (Score:3, Funny)
nothing makes me smile more than grown men who need their wife/girlfriend/friend to get out and guide them into *giant* spot. Buddy, ... there is only two inches between the guy in front and the guy behind and do it without tapping either bumper. It takes a while, but as I said, when you look for 25 minutes to find a spot--if I even think I can fit, fuck it, I'm going in!
Funny how you can omit a few words and it takes an entirely different context...