Parking meters and daylight savings time



  • Parking meters in the city of Arnhem, the Netherlands, switched back off daylight savings time one week early through “software problems” according to a spokesman for the company that runs them:


  • Garbage Person

    Why does a parking meter give a fuck about daylight savings?

    Just run a fucking timer.

    If there are no-charge times, just don't ticket people during them.


  • FoxDev

    @Weng said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Why does a parking meter give a fuck about daylight savings?

    Just run a fucking timer.

    If there are no-charge times, just don't ticket people during them.

    this is obviously the solution, because really what municipality wouldn't want free money

    it's harder to do variable priced parking (where offhours is cheaper than on hours) but why? just make everyhting one price because again, as a municipality: free money.


  • Garbage Person

    @accalia That's what they do here, except off hours are "just park at this handy expired meter"


  • :belt_onion:

    Parking meters - the original "Fuck You give me money".



  • @Weng said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Why does a parking meter give a fuck about daylight savings?

    Just run a fucking timer.

    If there are no-charge times, just don't ticket people during them.

    It's probably not a meter per se but a ticket automat - you get a paper ticket which states the start time (which you then have to deposit at a visible part under the front screen).


  • Garbage Person

    @Rhywden which is dumb because the central kiosk could just run a timer for each space which can be consulted for enforcement purposes.

    Because nobody can forge receipt papers!


  • BINNED

    @Weng Kiosk? Are you thinking enclosed parking space? These are most likely on the street. You're supposed to put the ticket you get in the visible place under the windshield. Every one of them has a serial number and a rather large barcode, usually. Alternatively, over here you can pay by SMS and parking patrol people (whatever the proper term is) can check if you bought it that way by referencing your license plate number.



  • @Gurth said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Parking meters in the city of Arnhem, the Netherlands, switched back off daylight savings time one week early through “software problems” according to a spokesman for the company that runs them:

    Why isn't parking free?



  • @El_Heffe said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Parking meters - the original "Fuck You give me money".

    Especially since, downtown, parking metering is completely random and unpredictable.


  • Java Dev

    @accalia said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @Weng said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Why does a parking meter give a fuck about daylight savings?

    Just run a fucking timer.

    If there are no-charge times, just don't ticket people during them.

    this is obviously the solution, because really what municipality wouldn't want free money

    it's harder to do variable priced parking (where offhours is cheaper than on hours) but why? just make everyhting one price because again, as a municipality: free money.

    1. The ticketing is almost certainly automated too.
    2. Not ticketing still screws up those who arrive before the paid period starts, because they can't buy a ticket with the correct start time.

  • FoxDev

    @PleegWat said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @accalia said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @Weng said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Why does a parking meter give a fuck about daylight savings?

    Just run a fucking timer.

    If there are no-charge times, just don't ticket people during them.

    this is obviously the solution, because really what municipality wouldn't want free money

    it's harder to do variable priced parking (where offhours is cheaper than on hours) but why? just make everyhting one price because again, as a municipality: free money.

    1. The ticketing is almost certainly automated too.
    2. Not ticketing still screws up those who arrive before the paid period starts, because they can't buy a ticket with the correct start time.

    -shrug-

    does the municipality care? NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST!

    they just go "fuck you, pay us"



  • @accalia said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @PleegWat said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @accalia said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @Weng said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Why does a parking meter give a fuck about daylight savings?

    Just run a fucking timer.

    If there are no-charge times, just don't ticket people during them.

    this is obviously the solution, because really what municipality wouldn't want free money

    it's harder to do variable priced parking (where offhours is cheaper than on hours) but why? just make everyhting one price because again, as a municipality: free money.

    1. The ticketing is almost certainly automated too.
    2. Not ticketing still screws up those who arrive before the paid period starts, because they can't buy a ticket with the correct start time.

    -shrug-

    does the municipality care? NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST!

    they just go "fuck you, pay us"

    Just like everything else.

    "But, red light cameras have proven to increase collisions in intersections. Sure, the drivers are at fault, but collision rates did go up not down."

    "Fuck you, pay us"


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @accalia said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    does the municipality care? NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST!

    Oh they care enough to allow you to contest the charge in court. All you have to do is:

    1. Come into the offices between the hours of 2pm and 3pm on a weekday. Hope you enjoy taking time off work
    2. File a form to contest with the city clerk. There is exactly one clerk. He's been here since before automobiles were invented. He works exactly that one hour. There is a lineup.
    3. Online contest? HAHAHAHAHHAHA
    4. The clerk will take your paper, and you will be given an appointment to file your Notice to Appear. That's different from your file for contesting the ticket.
    5. The Notice to Appear will be a random time somewhere between 1 week and 27 months in the future. You will receive a mail about it. The mail will arrive roughly 24 hours before your appointment.
    6. Failure to appear at the Notice to Appear hearing will result in you being assessed guilty, plus a court filing surcharge of 50%. This is a totally legit surcharge, and not a way of punishing you for going for due process.
    7. When you talk to the judge during your Notice to Appear, she will suggest several times you just settle the ticket by pleading guilty and paying the fine. She will threaten you with kindly inform you of the court surchanges that may be assessed against you if you dare to insist on due process and stand up for yourself avail yourself of the court
    8. You will be given a random time in the future when your court date is. Again, it will be during the day, and on a random day.
    9. When you show up to court, you will be pressured by everyone involved to plead guilty and take the charge. Because that's how pimps get paid. It has nothing to do with vested interests of a court system that funds itself by finding people guilty.
    10. If you have the gall to still proceed with the trial, if in the off chance the ticketing officer isn't available, the case will be dismissed. Otherwise, any evidence or case law you bring up will be ignored, and you will be found guilty. You wouldn't be in court if you weren't guilty, after all. You will be assessed the fine plus a large punishment surcharge.

    And that's justice!

    Oh, I forgot... if you happen to live in 🍁 where there are two official languages-- French, and the one that everyone who isn't a sanctimonious asshole speaks-- well, fun fact. You have the constitutional right to request your trial in the official language of choice. Be sure to pick French. Because there are literally no French judges or prosecutors. Or maybe there's one, who knows. The point is, your ticket will go in an infinitely large pile labeled "French trials", This pile never reduces. Chances are you will never hear of your ticket again. Even if you do, it won't be for a couple decades. At that point you can easily file a constitutional question citing the lack of a speedy trial, and have the ticket tossed. *

    Go, 🍁 !

    * offer void in Quebec



  • Uh what?

    Your meters have bits of paper? Why? Here you punch in the number of the space, pay, and then it is marked as paid for the next x units of time.


  • BINNED

    @JazzyJosh Don't know how it is in Netherlands, but over here parking spaces are separated by "zones". You can pay for any amount of time (up to a limit in some zones) and move your car freely between any parking spaces within that zone (or a "lower-ranked" one).

    In short, you're not tied to a parking space within the alloted time, but an arbitrarily large area.



  • My friend who lived in the centre of Amsterdam used to pay more to hire a tiny garage than he did for his flat.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @JazzyJosh said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Your meters have bits of paper? Why?

    So an attendant can walk down the row, ticketing every car without a slip of paper or whose paper is old. Why would you want to deny that guy his vengeance upon the wrongdoers? That guy's self-righteous indignation would boil up and he'd go on a killing spree.


  • Fake News

    @Lorne-Kates said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @accalia said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    does the municipality care? NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST!

    Oh they care enough to allow you to contest the charge in court. All you have to do is:

    Woah, at least put some spoiler tags around that for those of us who haven't seen Brazil.


  • area_can

    @Lorne-Kates said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    ****** offer void in Quebec

    Isn't it always?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @xaade said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Why isn't parking free?

    Because they wish to discourage people from parking there for long periods of time. Duh.


  • BINNED

    @dkf said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    they wish to discourage people from parking there taking the car into the city center



  • @JazzyJosh said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Your meters have bits of paper? Why?

    So parking inspectors can check for which cars the charge has been paid, for which it hasn’t, and which should have moved by now (or gotten a new bit of paper) but haven’t — and thus, on which they can put a fine behind the windscreen wiper.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Luhmann It's a love-hate relationship. They want the people in the car to come and spend money, but they don't want the vehicle itself. Also, they don't want to put in the amount of parking spaces required to allow everyone who wants to park to stay as long as they want (because that makes a wasteland devoted to nothing but parked cars).


  • Java Dev

    @Yamikuronue said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @JazzyJosh said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Your meters have bits of paper? Why?

    So an attendant can walk down the row, ticketing every car without a slip of paper or whose paper is old. Why would you want to deny that guy his vengeance upon the wrongdoers? That guy's self-righteous indignation would boil up and he'd go on a killing spree.

    You funny.

    The attendant drives by on his scooter at 50 km/h, with an electronic device that scans all license plates of parked cars. These are automatically cross-referenced with an online system listing every license plate for which someone paid. The rest get tickets mailed to their homes.
    Technically it is probably possible to send those tickets by next working day, but you're more likely to get them after a couple of weeks instead - just to allow you to make the same error a couple more times in case you didn't realise it was illegal.

    Paper tickets. Luddite.


  • BINNED

    @JBert said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Woah, at least put some spoiler tags around that for those of us who haven't seen Brazil.

    It's... well, it's a Terry Gillam movie. If you can appreciate his weirdness I recommend it. It's personally my favourite one of his.



  • @PleegWat said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @Yamikuronue said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @JazzyJosh said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    Your meters have bits of paper? Why?

    So an attendant can walk down the row, ticketing every car without a slip of paper or whose paper is old. Why would you want to deny that guy his vengeance upon the wrongdoers? That guy's self-righteous indignation would boil up and he'd go on a killing spree.

    You funny.

    The attendant drives by on his scooter at 50 km/h, with an electronic device that scans all license plates of parked cars. These are automatically cross-referenced with an online system listing every license plate for which someone paid. The rest get tickets mailed to their homes.
    Technically it is probably possible to send those tickets by next working day, but you're more likely to get them after a couple of weeks instead - just to allow you to make the same error a couple more times in case you didn't realise it was illegal.

    Paper tickets. Luddite.

    There's a lot of places in NL that still work with paper tickets that are not linked to a license plate.



  • @Luhmann said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    @dkf said in Parking meters and daylight savings time:

    they wish to discourage people from parking there taking the car into the city center

    Ha ha. In the back end of the 90s / early part of the 2000s, I lived in and later near Oxford, England, and there was a bit of a flap when the local rag fine local newspaper published a story explaining that the city centre multi-storey car park was (a) cheaper than the city-edge Park and Ride car parks, (b) pay-on-exit rather than pay-and-display(1), and (c) didn't require you to pay for a bus ride to get to the shops in the centre.

    (1) This drives up the cost of parking because you end up paying for a bit of extra time in case you are delayed getting back to the car park.



  • @Onyx Interesting


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