Illegal to feed someone else's parking meter?

[TheLazenby]

Really?

No one's gonna mention the ultimately very relevant "Meter Fairy" prank from Jackass?

[Judecat]

Originally Posted by AnglRdr

We have tons of businesses in our downtown, and all the metered parking is time-limited. There are also a lot of parking lots where business pay for parking by the month as a perk for employees.

Downtown Baltimore lacks room for more parking lots and multistory garages to accomodate all the workers downtown, since they have converted all the old department stores into more office buildings, and the old factories and warehouses into condo's. There hasn't been a new garage or parking lot built in downtown in at least 20 years,except for the ones at the stadiums, and those are not nearly big enough, nor convenient to most businesses.
The plan seemed to have been to make downtown car less, but since our transit system, is IMO inadiquate and antiquated, and not convenient to enough places, the plan never materializied. We have only one light rail line, and one subway line, no new bus routes since the 50's,(which all follow the old street car lines) that go downtown and not enough park and rides to get to the public transportation.
The suburb where I grew up still has 2 buses routed off the main route in the morning, one in mid afternoon, and 3 in the evening. If you can't use of those buses then it's a mile to the bus stop, and those buses run approximately once an hour. Before the Maryland transit took over we had own bus company which ran every 30 minutes to just inside the city.

"A lot of metered parking spaces here have a sign which say something to the effect of:

"Maximum stay 2 hours. Return not permitted within 2 hours."

The limit varies.

So because it's a busy place and they want as many people to be able to get to the shops as possible, your stay is limited.

Whether that's enshrined in law or bylaw I have no idea.

So yeah, if you feed someone elses meter, you permit them to stay beyond the limit. "

A have a friend who is a meter Maid in Boston some ares that she covers have a two hr limit. What she does when she starts her rounds is mark down license plates and time. When she comes back if the car has been in the same spot more than an hour they get a ticket even if the meter is fed.

[Embra]

In a carpark where you buy your ticket form a machine, I often leave my ticket behind for others if I leave the carpark earlier than expected with a lot of time left on my ticket.

I honestly don't see the problem with feeding other people's meters or leaving a paid-for ticket behind, as long as this action doesn't happen in a time-l;imited parking area (where the object of the time limit is to regulate parking flow etc., as has been pointed out). If a car park or metered bay has the option of unlimited parking provided a sufficient fee is paid, then I feel the collecting agency can have no complaint for receiving that fee.

I don't think charitable meter feeders should expect to be remunerated by vehicle owners though, where the owner doesn't have any choice as to whether the meter is fed or not.

Troberg's trick wouldn't work in parking situation's I've seen because traffic wardens seem to photograph the offending vehicle, which would show that a valid ticket wasn't displayed at the time the fine was issued. The parking regulations usually say that failure to display a valid ticket will give rise to a fine, not failure simply to buy a ticket (e.g. if you buy a ticket and it falls on the floor of your vehicle, you will still get a fine).

[KermieD]

Originally Posted by Esprise Me

What would be the rationale for such a law?

In our area, the downtown area is very short on parking directly next to retail. While there is parking a couple of blocks away, the goal is to discourage employees of both office and retail establishments in the area from parking in the prime customer spots.

Recently, the city has discovered that the parking meters were actually costing them more money than they were making from them, so they removed them entirely, replacing them with 90 minute parking signs (90 minutes to keep the employees from erasing the parking police's chalk and moving their car to another stall every 2 hours on scheduled work breaks).