L.A. will be seeing green with its new parking meters

 

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If you haven’t seen the new electronic parking meters being installed all across Los Angeles, they are a sight to behold.  Electronic parking meters are replacing 6,000 of the city’s 40,000 coin-operated machines and per The Los Angeles Sentinel , L.A. is expected to be seeing green…money that is…an additional $18 million in revenue per year.

But be alert, when you go to park your car, don’t assume just because there isn’t a meter right next to your car that you aren’t in a metered spot.  With the new meters comes a new system.  Numbers have been put on the sidewalk next to each parking spot and electronic parking meters placed at intervals along the street.  You note the number at your parking spot, go to the electronic parking meter and pay there.

A few advantages of the electronic parking meters are:

• they take coins, credit or debit cards,
• they show you exactly how many minutes are remaining from the previous person who had that parking spot (so you don’t overpay),
• they can apparently send you a text message if your meter is running low, and
• rather than running back to put money in your meter, you can apparently remotely pay through your cell phone.

A few disadvantages or downfalls are:

• it costs more to park – instead of $.25 per 15 minutes, some of the new meters start at a minimum cost of $1, while other popular spots are as much as $4 per hour,
• it cost $5.5 million dollars for 6,000 electronic meters, and
• what did they do with all those old parking meters?  Did they just toss them?  Did they recycle them?  I’d like to know.

It all comes down to this, you are going to be shelling out more green to park in Los Angeles.  So, you best be sure to save your money in other ways like take the bus or Metro train to work every now and again, car-pool as often as you can, put a fuel additive in your car to increase your fuel economy, get your car tuned up regularly, etc.  Hopefully you’ll save more than you spend.