Another analog stalwart is succumbing to the digital age:
Motorists' bane, magnet for thieves, and memorialized in the Beatles' “Lovely Rita,” the diminutive parking meter has led an outsize life. But its days in New York City are about to expire.
The city will remove its last decommissioned single-space parking meter in Manhattan on Monday, transportation officials said, the start of a yearlong process that will eventually eliminate all the steel-and-sludge-hued meters in the city.
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The old-fashioned, pole-mounted meter will now yield to the robotlike Meter of Tomorrow: a solar-powered box, equipped with Wi-Fi, that can handle eight parking spaces at once and can shut itself down on free-parking Sundays.
The city's Transportation Department, which recently accelerated its meter retirement program, says the change will benefit city and citizen alike: the new meters read credit cards, speak seven languages, require less maintenance, and free up room on the sidewalk.
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On Monday, only a few blocks from that historic site, the final meter, No. 101-0655, will be lifted from its perch on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, just north of 125th Street. Down the block, a sparkling new Muni-Meter has already been installed.
“I think they're beautiful,” Janette Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner, said of the new devices, which feature digital screens and colorful buttons. She laughed: “I mean, maybe I'm just a transportation expert at this point, but I think they're sleek.”
At 69 inches tall, the new meters “are designed with the environment in mind,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said. A solar panel sits atop their blue head. With no moving parts, there are fewer chances for malfunction, and the Wi-Fi connection allows the city to remotely set special rates and times.
I think parking meters are an excellent symbol of all that's wrong with living in an urban environment. You have to put up with all kinds of inconveniences and tempers and complicated maneuvers and strained scheduling just to make that many people together in one place a barely tolerable situation. At least with a parking meter, you have your own marked-off space as your refuge while negotiating the urban jungle. But that's an illusion. You're only renting the space temporarily, and when your time runs out, you have to "move it along, move it along," just like always in the city.
But I can see a wave of faux nostalgia developing for the sturdy "steel-and-sludge-hued" meters and a disdain for the whirling lights and Wi-Fi connections of the newfangled replacements. That's already evident in stories like the NY Times one linked to.
“Pulling up to a single-space meter and discovering there was 30 minutes on it from the previous owner — what a joy that was! Even if it was only saving you a dime, somehow it made my day.”
Phhhtttt! A joy!!?? Only if you have so little going on in your life that the smallest relief from pain is seen as a major victory.
As with most changeovers to a new digital normal, nothing fundamental is changing here. We're still going to be oppressed in the same way, just more efficiently.
The story says they're gonna auction off the old meters. I think it'd be kind of cool to put one in front of the office. Wouldn't you like to control how much time people can spend bugging you and pick up a little loose change to boot?
Comments
Cool Hand Luke would know what to do.
I was thinking about bringing him up but decided not to. Call it my failure to communicate.
As for me, I never planned anything in my life.
Guy was going through a divorce, and it was ugly, as those things often are.
She called the cops to file a complaint. He had broken into their old place while she was gone for the weekend. There was now a pipe welded to the foot of the bed, and at the top of the bed, there was a parking meter. She wanted him arrested for trespassing and for vandalism.
The cops arrived, and she let them in, led them to the bedroom, and waved her arm at the meter. The two cops bent over and looked at it closely, then straightened up. One turned to the other, and said, "Not one of OURS."
The cops turned as if to leave, and she said, "Well, aren't you going to DO anything about it?" Again the two cops looked at each other. The one cop said "You have seniority," and the other cop nodded. He reached down into his pocket and pulled out a penny, stuck it in the meter.
Heard the story from a meter maid I dated in the 1970s in Cincinnati. She swore it actually happened, but I have my doubts.