Pay-and-Display on the Way?
By Matt Wood in News on Oct 2, 2006 11:20AM
Nine years ago, Mayor Daley promised to replace all the parking meters in the city with "pay-and-display" boxes. Today there are only a handful of the machines that let drivers pay for a preset amount of time and toss the ticket on their dashboards, mostly because they cost almost $10,000 each. Like a true political promise, Daley's idea wasn't backed by any funds. Only a few boxes were installed downtown, on the Little Italy restaurant row, and one block of Lakeview.
But now we have a new promise, one that appears to have more behind it than a microphone and a podium. City Hall issued a request for proposals to purchase 2,000 more pay-and-display boxes over the next three years, replacing 20,000 meters outside the Loop. Each box can create up to three to four more parking spots on each block, because drivers can park bumper-to-bumper instead of within generous meter spots spaced to accommodate anything from a Fiesta to an Escalade. The boxes also boost parking revenue because drivers can't luck out and score a meter filled to the max by the previous driver who overestimated how long it would take to pick up their dry cleaning.
Chicagoist seeks out meter spots first when we're in a hurry, because there's usually one open and we don't mind paying if it means we don't have to circle the neighborhood for 45 minutes. The bonus of the pay-and-display boxes is that they accept credit cards and all kinds of cash, not just quarters. Keeping a separate meter fund in our ashtray made us feel like we were back in college, scrounging for laundry money. Extra spots and an easier way to pay is good all around. The going rate of six dollars for two hours is steep though, and we hope the new boxes would have varying rates according to the neighborhood like the old meters. But whatever the cost, three years is a long time to wait for them to arrive, long enough for a pie-in-the-sky proposal to be discarded for another, flashier project. We'll believe it when we're finally able to empty the quarter tray and find a parking spot in Wrigleyville.