Parking Revolt – Fighting City Hall

In my opinion, businesses where the parking rates have changed and the times where they are used (adding Sunday, extending times for Monday to Wednesday, etc.) will suffer.

The main parking meter hours used to be when the stores used coincide with the stores opening hours. Stores used to open from 9am to 5pm on Monday to Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday it would be around 9am to 9pm. Saturday would be around 9:30am to 5pm and Sundays the stores would be closed. We used to only have to pay during those hours. Now, we have to pay Monday to Friday from about 9am to 9pm. On Saturday and Sunday I believe it is now 9am to 6pm.

I used to watch movies downtown, go to restaurants, go shopping downtown, etc. Since the parking rules have come into effect, I've gone downtown a lot less. Everything that I can do downtown, I can do in the suburbs where there are large malls with ample free parking.

I see a lot of businesses suffering because of this.

I know that Montrealers pay probably the least of all the major cities in North America for parking but we are probably also the highest taxed city in North America between being the highest taxed province, etc.

The mayor's party says that the higher parking rates increase customers by having them buy their things and leave sooner giving more parking to other people. I don't buy that logic. The higher parking rates just make me do my shopping and my restaurant/movie activities in the suburbs.

Adding to this is the inability of topping up your parking where the high-tech parking meters are in effect. If I have 30 minutes left in the parking meter, in order to get an hour, I have to pay an hour instead of 30 minutes. Paying anything less than 30 minutes worth will give me a parking stub with the lower amount of time (but my parking will still be valid for 30 minutes).

It is said that business is down 20%, although the bad weather spell could be part of it.

It actually comes down to 25 cents per 7 minutes of parking

Even parking lot owner complain of decreased business because people are not coming downtown anymore
There are fewer private lots like this for people to use as alternatives because the city wants to close them "even if more competition means better prices which is good for the public."

Only one redeeming factor, the meters are powered by Linux not Microsoft 

Now this is fun a way around the system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmH_tR6IONc

After seeing the video, I wonder if the meter is at zero minutes and you are parked in that spot will it call for the police to come and give you a ticket, cause they will have to check every spot filled if it corresponds to a spot still running. I other words just put 5 cents in the meter wait till the cops come around sitting in your car and then really park there after they are gone.Wishful thinking I guess

The meter doesn't know if somebody's at the spot or not so, it doesn't call anybody. Calling out would not make any sense since the attendants would be running around all over the place all the time. The parking patrol still have to go around but instead of looking at dials on individual meters, they interrogate the closest machine, who tell them what meter is expired. They then check if there's a car in the spot.
I've read somewhere that the trick in YouTube is false. The printed ticket will display the time for the last paid period but the meter won't time-out till the previous time expire if it's later than the latest paid so, paying for 1 hour at 13:00 and having somebody pay for 15 minutes at 13:05 you won't wipe your 55 remaining minutes.
All this ticket trick does is, unless the person who was parked there before you give you the ticket, you have no way to know the remaining time so, you must pay again. This mean the same parking spot pays the City for a lot more cars than the ones actually parked there. You can have a few cars parked at the same spot at the same time, according to the meter!

Slippery_When_Oiled said:

Ghita, the girl in the above parking meter video, is hot.
[...]
And I think that's her squirting in this video preview: http://www.ideagasms.com/content.jsp?c=squirting_orgasms

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Wow, yeah it is her! Nice find!

I don't own a car so my 2¢ is really worth more like 1¢. But I definitely hope we "'parcavenue' the city" the city again, as has been said in another thread.

This is getting ridiculous. I'd be sold if they were trying to encourage motorists not to take their car or something like that, but this is not the motivation. It is only greed. Well said metoo, I didn't think of it that way, but it is as if there were multiple cars parked on that spot.

For me it means paying for parking lots more often. 2 hours for 6$ or all day for 9$ (Near Concordia University) The city isn't gaining from me, in fact they are losing from me this way...

Ronnie,
Naughtylady

lol.

I met her and her bf that produces the videos a few years ago, the creepy part is she was 18, and he was 30 something and they had been together for quite a while.....

Hey, using a faked petition worked once, so why not try it again.

What's creepy there? THe parking meter certainly are!

Love big tits said:

Now this is fun a way around the system
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmH_tR6IONc

After seeing the video, I wonder if the meter is at zero minutes and you are parked in that spot will it call for the police to come and give you a ticket, cause they will have to check every spot filled if it corresponds to a spot still running. I other words just put 5 cents in the meter wait till the cops come around sitting in your car and then really park there after they are gone.Wishful thinking I guess

Click to expand...

It doesn't work like what is stated in the video. If someone puts in 5 cents, regardless of what the parking stub says, the actual time is the higher amount and you will not get a ticket.

The way it works is if someone pays for 1 hour of parking at a spot and he/she is still parking there after 5 minutes and you decide to pay for 5 minutes worth of parking. You just wasted your money because the person will still have 55 minutes of parking regardless of what your ticket stub says. The ticket stub only shows the amount that you paid for and not how much time is actually remaining on the meter!

If the person pays for 1 hour of parking and leaves after 5 minutes. You decide to take the parking spot but you only need it for 30 minutes so you pay for 30 minutes. Your ticket stub will show that you paid for 30 minutes when in fact you actually have 55 minutes of parking. The only thing is that you don't know how much time is left when the other person leaves. If there is 55 minutes of parking, why would you pay for 30 minutes and leave after 30 minutes? The reason is that you don't know how much time is actually left on the parking meter.

Here is another problem (illustrated in this example): You have a doctor's appointment. You calculate the time and decide to pay for an hour of parking. You go to the doctor's office and notice that there is a slight backlog and the doctor probably won't see you for about 1 hour. You can't just go back to your parking spot and pay an extra hour, you have to pay for 2 hours if you want an extra hour. The reason for this is that the time that you previously paid for can't be topped off. This means that you paid for 3 hours and you only get 2 hours. In order to only pay for 2 hours of parking, you have to either pay for the 2 hours at the beginning or wait until your original hour is up and then just pay for another hour.

metoo4 said:

The meter doesn't know if somebody's at the spot or not so, it doesn't call anybody. Calling out would not make any sense since the attendants would be running around all over the place all the time. The parking patrol still have to go around but instead of looking at dials on individual meters, they interrogate the closest machine, who tell them what meter is expired. They then check if there's a car in the spot.
I've read somewhere that the trick in YouTube is false. The printed ticket will display the time for the last paid period but the meter won't time-out till the previous time expire if it's later than the latest paid so, paying for 1 hour at 13:00 and having somebody pay for 15 minutes at 13:05 you won't wipe your 55 remaining minutes.
All this ticket trick does is, unless the person who was parked there before you give you the ticket, you have no way to know the remaining time so, you must pay again. This mean the same parking spot pays the City for a lot more cars than the ones actually parked there. You can have a few cars parked at the same spot at the same time, according to the meter!

Click to expand...

Yes, you have it right! The meters can't be reset by putting in less money that the time remaining.

The printed parking stub shows the time that YOU paid for and NOT the time actually remaining on the parking meter. The only time when both values are the same is if when you park at a spot, you pay more than the time remaining at that spot.

If there is no time left at a spot (you are the first person to park there at 9am), your ticket shows the actual time remaining.

If there is 15 minutes left in the spot and you pay for 1 hour, your parking stub will show the correct time of 1 hour remaining in the spot since you paid more than the actual time remaining.

If there is 1 hour left in the spot and you pay for 15 minutes, your stub will show 15 minutes (what you paid for) but there is actually 1 hour left/available before a green onion will give you a ticket for parking there.

Since people don't know how much time is remaining at a spot before they park there, if they want to be guaranteed that they don't get a parking ticket, they leave before the time stated on THEIR parking stub (which shows how much they paid for).

Either way it goes we still get f**ked from one more hidden tax, isn't it great to live in a money hungry system?
I tested it today by the way and you are right the video was wrong.

Why should it be cheaper?

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Just a side comment on this, if we were talking about SP price in the city, which are still the greatest compared to other cities, would you be saying the same.

The argument to compare with others is never one that will thread water with me. We are in a different city, we come from different point of views and we are use to a different way of thinking. Right or Wrong that is what makes us unique, along with the right to argue and bicker. That can be said if you live anywhere, I am not ssaying we are unique.
The price is not the matter for me, it is the way the meters work, which just makes it possible for the city to get more from one hour of parking than what one hour actually costs.
The same way some of the parking signs in residential streets are made to confuse as many people as possible so nobody is really sure if they can park or not at that time. It is so bad that a GRC cop came to my office and asked me if he was parked in the right spot not to get a ticket cause he couldn't figure out the signs.

Increase the price if you want but make it so the next guy knows there is still 20 minutes left on the meter and he can add so much $ for the 1 hr he needs. Don't make it sneeky and complicated just for the joy of it or because you are a government of some sort.

DoingittoDeath said:

In terms of why Montreal should be any different, well, simply because the city has a deficit and money has to come from somewhere. deally, I'd like to have assurances that the money would go into public transit and that all other levels of government would maintain their funding for public transit and that it would improve

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This leads to a can of worms, accountability. It always seems that we hear from left and right that there is waistfull use of the tax payer money and then that taxes have to be raised.
I think most people so outraged because of that. If we knew that the money was put to good use then tax wouldn't be so bad. As it stands right now this is utopia.
In so far as using the public transit, from what I have read, it is not ready to accommodate the increase usage, in availability and material, that would make a difference. It needs to be made friendlier to the user as well.

I for one have work schedule that make me start very early and finish very late (sometimes) on the days I work. Public transit takes me the better part of 2 hrs (I tried) compared to 40 to 45 minutes tops with my car and even at time I couldn't go home because there would be no service.