Free Republic

The city of Pasadena is letting homeless people keep the change. The Los Angeles suburb is turning 14 parking meters into repositories for donations made to nonprofits that serve the homeless, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. Pasadena’s housing director, Bill Huang, says the hope is that people who might be reluctant to hand spare change to a panhandler will be more open to putting it in a meter. […] Some homeless advocates complain the meters aren’t a serious enough effort to help the homeless. They also say that in some cities meters have been used to push panhandlers out...

Chicago soon will have the nation’s most expensive downtown parking meters. On New Year’s Day, meters in the city’s downtown Loop area will begin charging $6.50 an hour—up from $5.75. …

Scofflaws could hack the smart cards that access electronic parking meters in large cities around the United States, researchers are finding. The smart cards pay for parking spots, and their programming could be easily changed to obtain unlimited free parking. It took researcher Joe Grand only three days to design an attack on the smart cards. The researchers examined the meters used in San Francisco, California, but the same and similar electronic meters are being installed in cities around the world. "It wasn't technically complicated and the fact that I can do it in three days means that other people...

One perk of driving a hybrid vehicle in the city of Los Angeles — free parking — will come to an end next month, under action taken today by the Los Angeles City Council. Almost a year ago, the council approved an ordinance allowing drivers with a state Clean Air Vehicle decal on their vehicle to park at city meters at no cost. Less than a week after that approval, however, the council moved to reconsider the issue in light of the city's financial problems. The council unanimously agreed to eliminate free parking for drivers of Toyota Prius, Honda Civic...

Stanley Yaffe thought he was committing a random act of kindness Wednesday when he put a quarter in a stranger's expired parking meter. Not so, a Denver "vehicle control agent" informed Yaffe. The "VCA" - as they say in the bureaucratic heaven of puffed-up titles and silly acronyms - told Yaffe that he had committed a crime: "Interfering with the collection of city revenue." I searched the phrase in the Municipal Code. No luck. I called Public Works. "We use the services of the Denver Police Department if there is any interference with the parking enforcement staff," spokeswoman Patty Weiss...

Pacific Grove, Calif -- In this seaside town, parking meters don't grant those magical few minutes on someone else's dime. Each time a car pulls away from a space, the meter automatically resets to zero. Little is left to chance in the brave new world of parking technology: Meters are triggered by remote sensors, customers pay for street time by cell phone and solar-powered vending machines create customized parking plans for the motorist. Oh, and forget about rubbing the traffic officer's chalk mark off your tires on the streets of cities where short-term parking is free but overstays are punished...

Hoping to head off a major loss to the city's treasury, the New Orleans City Council has passed an ordinance legalizing the new parking meters that Mayor Ray Nagin's administration began installing in January. Because the law seeks to authorize the new machines retroactively, its legality is almost certain to be tested in court.