The wizards in the New York City city council have passed a new law that gives five minutes grace to parking meters. I know, I know…
Let me attempt to parse this for you. If you buy 60 minutes on a parking meter, you get 65. Fair enough, I guess. So if the enforcement officer sees a meter that has expired what is he/she to do? The only thing they can possibly do is assume the meter expired a nano second before they glanced at it and then wait five minutes before writing the ticket. Of course when the driver came up, wouldn't they say that the officer had been "pushing" the time and then it only ran out a few seconds before.
As correspondent Mark put it so well:
Has anyone ever heard of somebody getting a ticket for anything other than being "two minutes over the time limit"? It ought to be interesting to see how they're going to enforce this one. The only way I can see to make it work is to program the meters to give 5 minutes grace on the front end, otherwise who's to say when the 5 minute grace period began or ended?
This is close to the most boneheaded idea that politicians have come up with yet. It can't be enforced. It will only add to the already mass confusion in the city streets of the Big Apple. And when the locals in New York find out that it makes no difference in the number of citations that are being written, they will double their calls to their local councilfolks.
The City council president:
"Just don't issue these tickets so quickly," he said. "It is not wrong to have a heart and not get people at the exact moment."
Mayor Bloomberg's comment:
"Whose watch are you going to use?" he asked. "I think something that is explicit, so there are no arguments, is in everyone's interest."
Another nominee for the coveted "Baghdad by the Bay" award, given periodically to those cities that just can't get their parking act together. Another law that will make no difference, cause chaos, and not be enforced.
JVH
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