New Haven Independent

posted by: Threefifths on May 11, 2012  2:24pm

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the public interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Keep voting them in.

posted by: DingDong on May 11, 2012  3:01pm

Threefiths: that’s insane.  I, for welcome, am glad the City is earning a bit more revenue and charging more for this scarce resource in a way that makes local businesses happy.

Free/subsidized parking=socialism.

posted by: meta on May 11, 2012  3:39pm

I’m curious to know the cost of the recent meter makeover- many meters in the downtown area now have new “fancy” black bases and have been repositioned. I hope that superficial effort didn’t cost “estimated $300,000 to $400,000”!!

(Actually, many of the new black bases are leaning. Amateur hour!?)

posted by: OhHum on May 11, 2012  4:14pm

Frequent more restaurants and businesses in the suburbs. Parking is free and is subsidized by the businesses not the gov’t.

posted by: Josh Levinson on May 11, 2012  4:52pm

I welcome the change in the meters.  As it stands now, parking is impossible to find after 7 pm due to the number of employees working for restaurants and bars who have parked there for free.  This will increase the chances of finding a spot before 9 pm significantly.

posted by: Threefifths on May 11, 2012  5:20pm

posted by: DingDong on May 11, 2012 3:01pm

Threefiths: that’s insane.  I, for welcome, am glad the City is earning a bit more revenue and charging more for this scarce resource in a way that makes local businesses happy.

Free/subsidized parking=socialism.

profit = capitalism.

posted by: OhHum on May 11, 2012 4:14pm

Frequent more restaurants and businesses in the suburbs. Parking is free and is subsidized by the businesses not the gov’t.

You got that right.Also some states it is illegal to feed the parking meters.Is that the law in this state.

posted by: stuckinNH on May 11, 2012  5:57pm

and who will be checking the meters….oh yes, will have to hire more help or pay overtime——and there goes all the revenue…...what a brilliant idea!!!!

posted by: Stylo on May 11, 2012  9:44pm

That’ll make me a little less likely to go downtown on a whim. Especially for some nice cheap food like York Street Noodle House where I wouldn’t have normally eaten out at all that night.

Also, the 2 hour limit is really inconvenient. If I have a group of friends coming downtown with me at 6:30, that means I have to worry about going and feeding the meter again at 8:30 - and we might have long moved on since then.

7 was fine. Or 8 at the latest. I know they’re going to mismanage and blow the extra money anyway, otherwise I’d be alright with paying it.

posted by: HhE on May 11, 2012  11:26pm

stuckinNH, as a rule, Meter Readers pay their own cost plus, so reading meters does not consume revenue.

As long as the hours on the meters are well marked, I am all for it.  My beef with New Haven meters is trying to figure their hours out.  In Greenwich, the meters are clearly labeled.

Capitalism is using capital to make profit.  Given how much capital New Haven has invested in its streets, why should it not make a profit. 

http://www.amazon.com/The-High-Cost-Free-Parking/dp/1884829988

posted by: anonymous on May 12, 2012  12:17am

Free parking equals socialism, and significantly drives up the price of everything - housing, food, health care, day care, you name it.

Please charge market price for the meters.  Reclaim some of the spaces for pedestrians, cyclists, and people waiting for public buses.  There is a huge opportunity there.

If you want to boost downtown business, make downtown a place where families want to spend more time going for a stroll.  Currently, they take their lives in their hands trying to cross some of the streets, something that directly correlates with the sections of our city that are economic dead zones.

posted by: Dracula is AWESOME on May 12, 2012  8:04am

Don’t like it? Buy a bicycle. The majority of the people who live in New Haven don’t need to drive in New Haven, they luxuriously choose to. If you walk, bicycle, or make use of public transit you don’t need to worry about it!

posted by: Stylo on May 12, 2012  3:01pm

Dracula is AWESOME,

New Haven’s establishments benefit tremendously from outsiders that drive. Its growth depends on not only mobile city residents, but from surrounding areas as well.

I retract part of my previous comment as I see they’ve made a 4 hour limit at night. That’s a good move.

posted by: Threefifths on May 12, 2012  7:58pm

Threefiths: that’s insane.  I, for welcome, am glad the City is earning a bit more revenue and charging more for this scarce resource in a way that makes local businesses happy.

Free/subsidized parking=socialism

Then let local businesses pay for my car at the meter.

posted by: leibzelig on May 13, 2012  12:03am

A number of years ago, the city asked those using parking meters to purchase time on a parkxmart card to be used on parking meters.
I did and for years, it worked fine.
Now, there are new meters that take coins, debit, credit and every card except the parkxmart cards the city asked us to purchase. So now I have money on the card but fewer and fewer meters on which it works.
Whom do I see about that? And was there ever a reason given why the new meters would not accommodate the parkxmart cards the city spent money acquiring and publicizing?

posted by: Win Davis on May 14, 2012  9:20am

A few points of clarification regarding the new parking policy:
1. At 5:00 PM you can pay for parking up to 9 pm at any meter so you don’t have to come back and feed the meter.

2. If you have money on a parcxmart card, you can call the telephone number on the back of your card and request a refund for the balance remaining on your card.

posted by: Joshua Mamis on May 14, 2012  12:49pm

I have two words for you all: Parking garages. New Haven has plenty of off-street parking capacity. Sure, the ‘burbs offer free and easy parking, and sometimes that’s a solution. But the ‘burbs don’t offer what New Haven has—lots of choice, some very unique spots, people-watching, galleries ... well, you all know this as well as I do. Great cities come with a cost, and one of those costs is that we often have to pay for parking. Personally, I’m not going to let a few extra bucks keep me from the best pizza in the world.

posted by: smackfu on May 15, 2012  10:45am

My main issue with the parking garage is that they are flat-rate at night.  $8 no matter how long you stay is not a good choice for me, considering that is 5 hours of street parking, and the street parking goes free at a certain point.  $2 an hour and I would probably choose them more, just because $0.50 is worth the convenience of not searching for a spot.

Personally I think the other thing that caused the pushback on the midnight limit was that the enforcement part was pretty fuzzy.  I think it was “the police will do it”, which I can’t imagine they were going to sign off on. Adding two hours and using the meter people seems much more politically viable.