OUR VIEW: Scrap meters: All of them

Staff Reports
Niagara Gazette

May 11, 2008 12:23 am

— The initial idea of parking meters was to keep cars moving in and out of business districts.
The theory went, if people paid for a finite amount of time to park on the street, they’d shop or do whatever it was they had to do in a set amount of time then move on. In that way, another possible customer could park in that same spot and make his or her purchases at local businesses, keeping those business owners happy. Then people wouldn’t take up a parking spot all day.
That was back when there actually were a lot of businesses on Main Street or Falls Street. Now the businesses that people want to go to are in the towns of Niagara and Wheatfield. They have free parking.
So the city is charging people to park in places they’d rather not go in the first place. Make sense? Of course not. Charging for parking in the city is just one more reason to avoid the city and go to the suburbs.
Of course, city officials will bemoan the loss of revenue if parking meters are removed. We say they can’t afford not to remove them. The slow death that Niagara Falls has been experiencing over the past 40 or 50 years is the result of a thousand wounds; parking meters are just one of the knives that drives people out of town.
The meter madness has taken center stage because of a free trial of high-tech parking meters installed last year in the downtown area. Never mind that anyone who wants to park for free can do so courtesy of the Seneca nation in the casino parking lot or ramp.
To add insult to injury, the fancy meters that take pictures of parking violators’ license plates never worked correctly during a free trial period. Now the City Council is poised to extend that trial period because the company that operates the meters says they’re fixed.
Isn’t that a great way to say to visitors “Welcome to Niagara Falls?” Pay for parking and, if you stay a few minutes too long, we’ll hunt you down like an animal and force you to pay a fine.
We have a better idea: Scrap the meters, not only the new ones, but the old ones as well. If the city needs to keep cars moving in and out of on-street parking, establish and enforce one-or-two hour parking regulations.
The parking meter was a creature of the 1950s. This is the 21st century. It’s about time the city of Niagara Falls figured that out.