Results tagged “meters”

That's the hot mess happening in Chicago right now. In a 75-year, $1.15 billion lease between the City of Chicago and Morgan Stanley, the bank gets to operate and earn revenue from 36,000 parking meters and several parking structures in the city. Not only that, the city just significantly increased parking meter rates and expanded hours and enforecable hours--including Sundays, some holidays and 24/7 in downtown. The city still gets to enforce and keep revenue from parking tickets, but Morgan Stanley can do supplemental enforcement in parking garages.

Blame the budget, the city every nickel and dime that you can spare, literally. Yesterday, the City Council's transportation committee recommended that the free hybrid parking at meters program should end on March 1st. The program was originally set to encourage people to buy the more eco-friendly hybrid vehicles. Now with hybrids a more ubiquitous sight and with parking prices increased, giving away a free metered space is much more of a loss--up to $4 per hour per space where a hybrid is parked. The full city council will take the issue up at a future meeting.

Last night on KCRW's Which Way, LA, the controversy over the parking meter increases was discussed. But first, let's start off with what the city's City Council Transportation Committee Chair, Wendy Greuel, was sending out yesterday

According to Daniel Mitchell, Senior Engineer with program oversight for the new fancy Park & Pay Meters, the next scheduled "roll-out" is in Venice in three separate areas on Main Street, Winward Ave. and Washington Blvd. The estimated completion date is July 31. To date, the only on street location of these new credit-card taking, cell-phone paying machines is located in Silver Lake on Sunset Blvd. More are to come throughout the city over the upcoming months. 30 off-street lots currently use this new technology.

The Department of Transportation caught wind of yesterday's confusion at the Park and Pay Machines in Silver Lake and decided to take a stab at explaining what happened. "What occurred in this case is that after inserting their quarter, the customer pressed 'OK' twice when all they needed to do was walk away," explained Daniel Mitchell, a Senior Transportation Engineer who is charged with leading the park and pay station program. "After pressing OK, the pay station allows you to select how much you would like to pay with your credit card, and the default is $0.50."

The new Park & Pay meter system is now in effect in Silver Lake -- at least along both sides of the 3500 block -- where we found people gathering in confusion at this meter outside Millie's this morning.

Since the perk of giving Hybrid owners a free ride when it comes to Los Angeles city parking meters has been in the news lately, the always fiscally conservative Daily News opined on the issue today: "The right thing is for the council to kill the hybrid car perk."

Dear LAist; So the City Council changed the law for hybrid car parking on Friday, then reneged it yesterday. So as of today, what the hell can I do?