Thursday, August 11, 2011 • The RIVERDALE REVIEW
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More muni-meters to pick your pocket
By BRENDAN McHUGH Single-space parking meters are about to expire. Since last month, the Department of Transportation has started replacing the old parking meters with the much-reviled muni-meters. By summer 2012, every meter in the city will be a muni-meter. The DOT says budgetary reasons are behind the switch, as the munis cost less to maintain, they bring in more money and they save the meter attendants time collecting the money. If an old meter is broken, the lucky driver who finds it gets to park for free. If a muni-meter is broken, the driver has to find one that works. The switch from old to new, like everything else, has met with confusion and outrage. Last week, state Senator Adriano Espaillat and Manhattan City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez led a walking tour with Manhattan DOT commissioner Margaret Forgione to explain the newly installed meters. Manhattan just finished replacing all single-space meters. “This is a very practical machine,” Espaillat said on the tour. “I think it’s very user-friendly. I think it’s a smart way to get people to comply with the law, to contribute to the city and also to have available parking.” The muni-meters are meant to allow cars to park closer together, thus creating more parking spaces. However, that is not always the case. “You have people who simply do not know how to park,” Kingsbridge Heights resident Elijah Manners said. “Seniors, adults, women, men, teenagers. It doesn’t matter. Someone parks bad, it screws up everyone.” But the Manhattan borough commissioner believes people will get the hang of it soon enough. “You can fit about 15 percent more vehicles at the curbside when you eliminate each of the single-space meter poles,” Forgione said. In The Bronx, Arthur Avenue from Crescent Avenue to East 189th Street and 187th Street from Hoffman Street to Prospect Avenue have been converted to muni-meters. The DOT puts upcoming conversions on their website at least 30 days before any changes. No more conversions in The Bronx are scheduled for August. Another criticism of the muni-meters has been the extra time it takes to get to the meter and back to the car to place the recipt in view on the dashboard. Stories of people getting a parking ticket during the time it took to walk to the muni-meter and back to the car are far too common, but the city says it will void such tickets if a driver can produce a receipt from the machine stamped within five minutes of the time the ticket was issued. “It has a permanent clock. Anytime you’re walking by and you want to know the time and you don’t have a watch, just look at the meter and it’ll tell you the right time,” Espaillat said. Not all pols are in agreement over the muni-meters. “I think the muni-meters have unfortunately been a failure,” Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz said. “I have not seen what the advantages are, except costing people more money. They were supposed to increase the number of parking spots. Clearly, that has not happened. I would like to get rid of the
ones we already have.” While he does like the fact that munimeters take credit cards, he sees them as another instance of the city making residents’ lives just slightly more difficult. “All these little things just add burdens to people’s lives,” he said. “You can’t even piggyback off meters with time left over.” Drivers are allowed to move their cars within the immediate area and use the same receipt to park elsewhere. As part of the budget effort, DOT began increasing parking meter rates in The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Manhattan north of 96th Street during the summer of 2011. In The Bronx, meter rates began changing on July 25.