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Nine years ago, Mayor Daley promised to replace all the parking meters in the city with "pay-and-display" boxes. Today there are only a handful of the machines that let drivers pay for a preset amount of time and toss the ticket on their dashboards, mostly because they cost almost $10,000 each. Like a true political promise, Daley's idea wasn't backed by any funds. Only a few boxes were installed downtown, on the Little Italy restaurant row, and one block of Lakeview.
But now we have a new promise, one that appears to have more behind it than a microphone and a podium. City Hall issued a request for proposals to purchase 2,000 more pay-and-display boxes over the next three years, replacing 20,000 meters outside the Loop. Each box can create up to three to four more parking spots on each block, because drivers can park bumper-to-bumper instead of within generous meter spots spaced to accommodate anything from a Fiesta to an Escalade. The boxes also boost parking revenue because drivers can't luck out and score a meter filled to the max by the previous driver who overestimated how long it would take to pick up their dry cleaning.
Chicagoist seeks out meter spots first when we're in a hurry, because there's usually one open and we don't mind paying if it means we don't have to circle the neighborhood for 45 minutes. The bonus of the pay-and-display boxes is that they accept credit cards and all kinds of cash, not just quarters. Keeping a separate meter fund in our ashtray made us feel like we were back in college, scrounging for laundry money. Extra spots and an easier way to pay is good all around. The going rate of six dollars for two hours is steep though, and we hope the new boxes would have varying rates according to the neighborhood like the old meters. But whatever the cost, three years is a long time to wait for them to arrive, long enough for a pie-in-the-sky proposal to be discarded for another, flashier project. We'll believe it when we're finally able to empty the quarter tray and find a parking spot in Wrigleyville.
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If my neighborhood is any example, using these boxes will COST each block at least SIX parking places because Chicago drivers don'e know HOW to parallel park! Ask anyone who lives in Andersonville where we have to orbit the neighborhood sometimes for an HOUR, just to find a parking spot within four BLOCKS of our homes, but where people park SO badly that an extra six to ten cars COULD be parked per block if spaces WERE marked!
I love those boxes. It's so much easier to pull a couple of bills or the credit card out than search for quarters. I'll bet meter boxes are around for a lot longer in certain neighborhoods, but downtown the electronic boxes are great.
Lee, I lived in Andersonville and never had trouble parking. I don't see how anyone would need to drive around for an hour looking for parking.
m - i the last two months, I have had to cruise our neighborhood (the area bordered by Clark, Glenwood, Balmoral and Berwyn) for over an hour, no fewer than twelve times when trying to park during the hours between 7PM and midnight.
And my wife has had to do the same thing at least a eighteen times as well. We both work a lot of evening jobs, obviously, and the parking situation with the valets from several of the restaurants parking customer's cars on our streets is becoming a REAL problem.
Add the construction on the alley between Summerdale and Berwyn (an on-again-off-again thing for FIVE YEARS now!) and it's even worse now!
Sorry for the slow comeback on this. It's been a busy season, we're preparing to move and, as an entertainer, I am REALLY up to my ears in work right now..!