The city I lived in for forty years adopted parking meterea for the same reason Fairmont says it did: to keep downtown store employees from tying up parking spots used by customers.
The problem: those employees proved more than willing to keep feeding the meters or pay the tickets, especially in stormy or wintry weather. The potential customers were annoyed that they now had to pay for what once was free; and went elsewhere. Additionally, as more and more of us rely on plastic, some of us don't routinely carry coins to begin with.
Time alone will tell; but this effort to help the downtown could well end up hurting it. The way to stay competitive is to offer products and prices that make it worthwhile to circle the block a few times or to walk a block or two. (Look at the WalMart lot. Some people are willing to park farther away there than they'd have to downtown. As it happens, I'm not one of those but, with their hours, I can also come back during slack times.)
Voteno
The city I lived in for forty years adopted parking meterea for the same reason Fairmont says it did: to keep downtown store employees from tying up parking spots used by customers.
The problem: those employees proved more than willing to keep feeding the meters or pay the tickets, especially in stormy or wintry weather. The potential customers were annoyed that they now had to pay for what once was free; and went elsewhere. Additionally, as more and more of us rely on plastic, some of us don't routinely carry coins to begin with.
Time alone will tell; but this effort to help the downtown could well end up hurting it. The way to stay competitive is to offer products and prices that make it worthwhile to circle the block a few times or to walk a block or two. (Look at the WalMart lot. Some people are willing to park farther away there than they'd have to downtown. As it happens, I'm not one of those but, with their hours, I can also come back during slack times.)
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