"... But I Sure Miss Them Now!"

Yesterday afternoon, I watched a parking enforcer doing his best to issue so-called meter violation tickets in the upper portion of the 500 block of Warren Street.  Of the 5 vehicles parked on the north side between The Whaler and 6th Street, he issued 3 of them (consecutively!) ten-dollar tickets after scanning the registration sticker and taking 3 pictures of each vehicle.  All the while dressed in a dark uniform and mostly while standing or walking along the driver's side of the parked vehicles while traffic rolled by a foot or two away.  One of these enforcers is bound to get struck sooner or later, a hazard that has increased dramatically since the parking meters were removed from the sidewalks.

At one point, the owner of the second ticketed vehicle came trotting over to the enforcer after he had just issued a ticket to the third vehicle.  The fellow asked why his car had been ticketed if there was no way to pay for the space.  The enforcer pointed to a scannable paid parking sign high up on a nearby streetlight pole, asked him if he had his phone, and proceeded to explain the new payment system, even handing the fella a piece of paper to help him out.  All the while standing in the street for at least two minutes next to a dark vehicle with the enforcer dressed in matching dark clothes while multi-ton vehicles rolled by a foot or two away.  Real smart!

Do you think the drivers of the other two ticketed vehicles had the same trouble figuring out how to pay for their parking space?  It's worth noting that the city gave no grace period for people to get accustomed to the new paid parking system.  Remove meters, install scannable signs high on streetlight poles and on meter poles, resume ticketing.

On Saturday, I happened on an older woman having difficulty with the kiosk outside the Union Street lot and we got to talking about the big parking change.  She said it was "crazy."  At one point, just before giving up on getting anything out of the machine, she summed things up pretty well. "You know," she said, "the quarters were kind of a pain, but I sure miss them now."