Parking meter coin collectors
13
April
4/13/2009:
How do we know?
Not sure how many people it takes to collect the quarters out of Hoboken’s parking meters – but here we have three guys having a grand ole’ time removing coins along Washington Street.
I hope that whomever gets elected Mayor figures out a way to close any and all loopholes that exist with these things (i.e., modernize the whole process, audit trail, etc.)
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April 13th 2009 - 10:06:36 |
One to open the meter.
One remove the coins.
One to put them in each of their pockets.
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April 13th 2009 - 10:22:14 |
Sad that you need 3 people to do this b/c you can’t trust just 1 to do it on their own w/o stealing. Let me guess, the guy they caught stealing quarters is on paid leave, right?
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April 13th 2009 - 10:39:07 |
Enought said! Looking for the outcome of the ongoing investigation and any resultant action. This will be a test for the new mayor’s administration.
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April 13th 2009 - 11:02:31 |
we still haven’t finished the investigation and collected our money with interest/fines? but the taxpayers have already been taxed for the shortfall in revenues!
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April 13th 2009 - 11:08:39 |
I think the city should seriously consider the meters like what’s in NYC, at least for Washington Street and 1st street. You can use Credit/Debit, which would greatly reduce the amount of cash that is being collected and could possibly be stolen. Doesn’t that make so much more sense?
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April 13th 2009 - 11:25:29 |
bradykp wrote:
It would make a lot of sense. It should also allow variable rates, higher so that you can find a spot on Friday night, lower at other times, so we don’t have too many empty spaces. The problem is that even with the higher taxes, we are on an austerity budget, no capital spending.
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April 13th 2009 - 11:32:13 |
davidd wrote:
yeah. i disagree with variable rates though. there are few times of day where you can find spots anyways. the only way I’d support variable rates is if you could get some sort of resident discount. residents should have first crack at the parking. but it’s still a good idea and i see your point. bottom line is, the city needs to maximize their efforts on parking in this town.
there would also be far fewer meters to “maintain” which i imagine would amount to some sort of savings over time as well!
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April 13th 2009 - 11:32:52 |
how do you know what they are doing? it could be that a couple of them are there to fix a broken meter and the third one is showing the problem to them.
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April 13th 2009 - 11:55:39 |
aap wrote:
No, i’ve seen the same crew on First St. Between Clinton and Grand at the meters across from Nags head doing the same song and dance. I think the one guy is an actual city official and the other two are just a bunch of bums that know his pick up times/route and follow him begging for money
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April 13th 2009 - 11:55:59 |
Wah wah wah – your whining is getting tiresome.
$20 says most of you didn’t even vote in the last Mayor’s election, just like the rest of recent Hobokenites.
Stop whining like bitches and deal with the situation you indirectly created.
Enjoy your mess!
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April 13th 2009 - 12:05:08 |
I can’t think of a good way to discount Hoboken residents. However the point of the meters is to ensure sharing of scarce parking in our downtown. Would you mind variable rate parking if nine times out of ten there were free spaces available on Hudson or Bloomfield?
The main problem with parking, as I see it, is that that demand is very high, but resident parking is artificially low. ($25 resident parking for a year would get you one day in a market rate parking deck) Any increase in the available free parking is met with more people deciding that they can handle the hassle of parking in Hoboken, The solution is to charge more for resident parking fees (closer to market) Fewer cars parking in the residental only areas would make it possible to park for ‘free’ most of the time.
Yes, I think muni meters would save money as the ‘three wise men’ would have to visit only about a tenth of the current meters…
bradykp wrote:
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April 13th 2009 - 12:12:32 |
Saw how these meters were made on Discovery Channel
They produce a precise reading for the amount put in .
We should make sure the numbers match just like they have to match at a register in a store.
Where is our money ?
Where is the investigation?
Let us make the readings public ( so we know how much we should be receiving
This area is famous for stealing the money 1 for the city 2 for collector
Time to stop the corruption!!!
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April 13th 2009 - 12:41:05 |
Re: 4, 12 Posts – Outside law enforcement agency is investigating the “quarters” situation”. That is my understanding. The modern tech meters sound good…
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April 13th 2009 - 13:38:12 |
davidd wrote:
i’m not sure i understand what you mean. you’re saying the residential spots would be more open if the metered spots were more expensive? less people in the “4 hour visitor” spots?
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April 13th 2009 - 14:59:38 |
Not at all, I’m saying that if parking permits where higher you could park on a resident only area of a side street (fairly) easily. Then you might not mind variable pricing on Washington, since you would rarely need to pay it.
Just pushing for ‘congestion’ pricing as the solution for Hoboken’s scarce street parking issues.
bradykp wrote:
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April 13th 2009 - 15:02:42 |
In my previous post, I meant that with higher parking permits, there would be more available street parking off of Washington, such that residents would not need to use variable pricing meters on Washington often if the did not want to.
I think both higher parking permits and variable pricing are needed to solve Hoboken’s awful parking situation.
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April 13th 2009 - 21:57:31 |
That makes no sense. Where would the cars go? You think residents would rush to the city garages and pay $200+ a month.
If the city wanted to create over 100 spaces all over the city all they have to do is paint back the yellow lines on the corners from 25 feet to 15 feet. Everyone parks behind the yellow line , 10 feet further back from the corner than they legally need to be, thus wiping out 8 spaces at every intersection in town.
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April 13th 2009 - 23:09:50 |
Well you might create more spaces than that. There are ~196 intersections in this town. The problem is many are (illegally) in use already by resident’s cars, I am pretty sure there are safety concerns given Hoboken’s many narrow streets… Given the low cost of parking permits, more residents would immediately overflow the legalized space.
No, I don’t think residents would flock to garages. Parking permits would need to be $1000 before they’d push people to the deck. I’d expect people with weekend cars to give them up and people in building with built in parking to not get resident permits. Studies suggest the right price could bring a 10-15% reduction in the number of cars which should reduce parking times to seconds.
What I’d like is for the council to do a survey to find out what the price point is. With exceptions for low-income individuals and the elderly. Still sound crazy?
gofigure wrote:
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April 14th 2009 - 09:41:17 |
garages with good subsidy for residents, and more metered parking to increase revenues.
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April 14th 2009 - 12:27:06 |
davidcdavid64 wrote:
Will never happen. We can’t even get land for parks, much less parking.
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