There’s plenty to hate about driving—traffic jams,
car accidents, speeding tickets—not to mention the endless headache of
finding a spot to park. So what if you discovered an invention that
could wean us from our vehicles, combating suburban sprawl and making
city streets less dangerous, congested, and polluted? Well, that device
has been around for nearly 80 years: It’s called the parking meter.
Contrary to popular belief,
the parking meter was originally designed to keep traffic moving and
make more spaces available for shoppers, a measure often lauded by local
businesses as much as the public who paid their hourly rates. Beginning
with the first parking meter, installed in 1935 on the corner of
First Street and Robinson Avenue in Oklahoma City, and spreading clear
across the United States, the device was hailed as the great solution to
our parking woes. Yet decades of poor meter implementation, inane
off-street parking requirements, and technological stasis slowly turned
our city streets into a driver’s nightmare.
For the rest of the story: http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/please-feed-the-meters/?src=longreads
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