To students and residents alike, a quick trip to College Park Shopping Center has long involved a game of high-stakes guesstimation: One must take into account multiple factors when deciding just how much loose change to grab from the center console before exiting the vehicle. Too little money, and you might incur the wrath of a neon-cloaked meter maid. Too much, and you’re the schmuck, letting someone else piggyback off the hard-earned nickels and dimes of time left on your parking meter.
But sadly, those days are over. The City of College Park has replaced the old, familiar parking meters with newfangled parking “stations.” Supposed monuments to the efficiencies of modern technology, the five stations handle the workload of 143 meters. They have fancy screens and colorful buttons, and the solar panels on top evoke a vague sense of environmentalism, never mind that four of the five stations are located in the shade beneath an overhang.
And like a field of freshly mowed dandelions that you kind of, sort of liked, the meters themselves have been chopped off, replaced by an expanse of metal poles adorned with curiously numbered signs. Other, larger signs instruct visitors to find the nearest parking station and conveniently wait in line.
So much for efficiency. The lines that frequently ran four-deep on a recent summer evening will likely subside as people become familiar with the new system, but the city’s profit margin will go nowhere but up. Officials brag that the parking stations accept credit cards, but they don’t mention that the minimum charge is 75 cents; if you don’t have change, you may as well sit in the car while you enjoy that ice cream cone, because it’s the only way you’re likely to spend an hour at the shopping center.
Gone, too, is the age-old surprise of finding a spot that has already been paid for. There’s no longer a meter to tell you how much time is left, so the station forces visitors to pay for the same spot over and over. The only way to beat the system is to pass off your receipt to another motorist, a delightful fusion of pay-it-forward and stick-it-to-the-man that I certainly encourage. But as enticing as a parking receipt black market would be, the geometry of the lot is a natural barrier to such practices.
I suppose the city’s decision to install the parking stations reveals something about the motives of our elected officials: Rather than maintain an efficient system perfectly catered to the needs of a strip mall, they spent tens of thousands of dollars installing new machines designed to squeeze just a bit more money from the pocketbooks of local residents. They’ll call it an investment and explain all the wonderful things they can do with the increased revenue. In response, I’ll shrug my shoulders and sigh, and then go off to play my new game. It’s called, “Park next to Applebee’s, where they still have meters.” Take that, technology.
Christopher Haxel is a senior English major. He can be reached at haxel at umdbk dot com.
