There’s been plenty of talk about the Parking Meter “Pay at Box” Machines malfunctioning.
But I haven’t seen anything about the fact I noticed today: It’s impossible to add time to them! To add time to your car’s “meter” before it expires, you have to pay again for whatever time you have left!
It’s true. At an old-fashioned, coin-operated meter, let’s say I put in enough for 2 hours, the maximum time. Let’s say I get a break from work, or whatever I’m doing, when that time is down to 45 minutes. I need another hour, so I run outside and add enough quarters to bring the meter — my car’s own personal meter — back up to an hour and forty-five minutes. Duh.
Take the same scenario with these new box machines. Say I pay for two hours, the maximum time, at 12:00 noon. The machine (if it’s working) prints a little piece of paper for me to place on my windshield, which reads “expires at 2pm.” Perk: I didn’t need any quarters! It took my credit card. Problem: This little piece of paper is a final document.
Let’s say I happen to get a break from whatever I’m doing at 1:15pm. This is my only break — I can’t leave my job/meeting/kids/doctor/interview/MRI again until 2:15pm. But the little piece of paper cannot be amended to “tack on” time. The machine, once it spits out that paper, holds no record of my car or what I’ve paid. It’s not an individual little meter, assigned to me. It’s a big, block-encompassing machine, and it knows nothing of my vehicle. If I need to stay until 2:15pm, I must pay for another hour from scratch, as if the machine and I never met. So even though I’m paid through to 2pm, and need only 15 more little minutes of time: I must pay for another full hour in order to stay parked.
Now, sure, if this is an everyday scenario I can budget my time better so that the little piece of paper’s expiration time will coincide exactly with my predictable break. But life is not predictable. And, yes, technically the reason for “maximum times” is that no one should stay at a metered spot for more than 2 hours. Ha ha ha.
Consider the implications here. Anyone in this city who wants to add time to their “meter” must start from scratch at the time they are able to make it out to the car. Once more: You can no longer add time to a meter.
Forget, for a moment, the hike in rates. Forget the host of Chicago parking injustices. Forget, too, the fact that (in their favor) the machines do add the convenience of credit card use. Forget all that.
The city has taken away our ability to add time to meters until our time has expired! Am I wrong? Somebody tell me I’m wrong. Somebody show me the button you push so that the machine remembers your credit card and knows how much time you have left. I’m pretty sure that magic button doesn’t exist.
But hey. What’s an extra pile of quarters on a credit card anyway, right?
