City's New Drug: Electronic Parking Meters

So Mayor Nickels wants to reduce the number of parking spots downtown, and thanks to the Seattle Weekly, we learn that the city is also systematically converting free street parking into $1.50/hour e-parking—and making bank on the deal.

The program to replace parking meters on city streets with a pay-station system is a financial success no one at City Hall wants to brag about. New figures show the ubiquitous curbside kiosks, which issue time-stamped parking stickers that can be affixed to a car window, are already earning about $3 more a day per parking space—at $6.50, they're bringing in almost twice as much as the clunky electronic coin meters they replaced. The wireless, solar-powered kiosks will collect $16 million in coin and credit- or debit-card revenue this year, officials say. That's an impressive $6 million jump since 2003, when the system was launched and parking meters collected $9.9 million.

Being a government program, there's a catch, of course, which might be why politicos and bureaucrats don't seem to be talking up the big score. A great deal of the added revenue is coming from hundreds of pay stations that have been or will be installed at once-free downtown and neighborhood parking spaces. The target is the citywide conversion of 2,000 free or time-limited parking spaces (30-minute and two-hour spots, for example) to paid kiosk spaces.

With free parking going the way of the free lunch, another sly parking revenue–maker is lurking: a rollback of after-hours free parking. City Hall is mulling plans to extend paid-parking hours to nights and weekends in some areas.

I enjoy going downtown, I really do. But it's almost as if city officials are combining forces to keep people like me away. Seriously, what's the deal? How about first fix the bus system—you know, so it actually serves people outside the downtown core with useful routes—then implement your step-by-step banishment of cars. Either that or just come right out with your true agenda and ban cars from downtown all together, right now. Oh but wait, I guess then you would miss that cool $16 million.

(Rick Anderson, Seattle Weekly, 04.12.2006)