Comment by TheGRS
1 day ago
If anything the prompt from your phone that your meter is expiring is a huge plus against forgetting about it and getting dinged with an outrageous parking ticket. I'd much rather go through the brief stress of that reminder than a ticket any day. A parking ticket will put me in a sour mood for the rest of the day easily.
Such feature is designed to catch people who might not pay attention. Innocent looking money grab.
Some better parking apps simply let you start the meter and then stop when you get back to your car, so you don't have to worry you miss it and get a fine.
If you forget to pay when you get back to your car, are you charged the max? That's how it works with other systems like this that I've used.
Yep. Our city had that system, you started a timer in the app when you parked and had to remember to stop it when you left the parking spot. Appeals of "I forgot to stop the meter" were routinely denied (I think there was still a max like 24 hours, so that you could not accrue an arbitrary amount... or maybe it stopped the next time someone else started paying for that spot. I never used the app so I'm not sure how it worked, I always just paid for a fixed block of time using a card).
I have nostalgia for the coin operated meters I grew up with. It was always a little thrill to park and then find there was still an hour or more left on the meter from the previous person.
Yes it does that. Still, less than a fine would have been.
The prompt is a fix for an imaginary problem produced by senselessly aping physical limitations. A meter fed with quarters forces you to prepay a particular amount whereas a digital service which has at minimum your credit card could simply charge you the correct amount.
It's not exactly "senselessly" but rather "shrewdly" ensuring that you're incentivized to pay for more time than you'll actually need so that you don't risk getting a ticket or needing to make a trip back to the meter.
Probably also momentum in their previous meter systems to keep it mostly the same.