I haven’t gotten a parking ticket in probably 8 years or so, but that’s only because I got so many of them so consistently that I decided I just HAD to make sure I had plenty of quarters in my pocket whenever I had a job in the grinding, traffic-clogged burg of FT. LEE, NEW JERSEY, which was very often , since I had a bunch of regular customers who had various Real Estate there. There would be one scrawny little 60ish woman who would visit and re-visit cars along the business district strip, and make sure to get there THE MINUTE the meter expired. There are ALWAYS meters that don’t work, that swallow your quarters, and happen also to be the only vacant meters in the immediate area,leaving you with the choice of just taking your chances or driving around for ten minutes until you can find another meter reasonably close to where you have to go. This is in a town
which built a VAST public parking lot, using taxpayer dollars, in the middle of the business district, manned by automatic machines that require you to punch in your parking space number, feed the appropriate # of quarters, receive your little ticket, and place it in your windshield where the meter maid can see it. In best Big Gov tradition, your tax dollars are being used directly to punish, fine and MAKE YOU PAY AND PAY AGAIN. A self-enclosed circle of futility for the taxpayer, which is enough to make anyone crazy, and very very pissed off over time, because there is NOTHING behind it except extortion, and the funding of more and more
“projects” like this, which serve as successful examples of
the stranglehold they have citizens in.
it’s funny how various parts of the country treat their citizens so different.
Here in the Texas town I live in not only is all downtown street parking free (with a two hour limit) but the business owners have banded together and formed an organization that makes additional improvements to the area like free parking lots and access to a free shuttle that travels around downtown to make it easier to patronize various downtown businesses while only having to park once.