Oakland's New Economic Experiment

Somewhere around July, Oakland City Council ok'd an amendment to Title 10 of the Oakland Municipal Code, adding Pay and Display Meters to our city's method of controlling parking and collecting revenue therefrom. Pay and Display is not a completely new method of paying for parking; Seattle's had an adhesive form of the receipts out for quite some time. In Oakland, the way it works is, you park in an empty spot designated as part of the Pay and Display zone, you pay at an electronic pay station, you get a receipt, and you place the receipt on your dashboard (not sure how this works for motorcycles). You can pay with coins, bills, or credit/debit cards, and the receipt looks like this:



Two hypothetical situations occurred to me the other day:

First, say I found myself parking in one location (Piedmont Ave.) and finishing my business with fifteen minutes left on my receipt. Let's say I zip on over to another location (Grand Ave., in front of the Safeway), and instead of putting money in the meter, I just leave the receipt on the dash and hurry through my shopping. I'm a fast shopper, so I'm out in ten minutes, just before my receipt is set to expire.

Second, say I found myself again finishing my business while I still had time on the receipt (five minutes this time). I notice that the guy parked next to me is sitting in his car waiting for someone to finish shopping; he does not have a Pay and Display receipt. I hand him mine, and I drive away.

In the first case, what I've done may be against the Pay and Display ordinance (10.36.050.A):

It is unlawful for any person to park or leave standing any vehicle in any pay-and-display space on any street for a period of time in excess of parking time limits designated on the receipt issued from the pay-and-display meter controlling the space.

Apparently, each pay-and-display meter has a set number of meters assigned to it, and if you use a receipt from another machine, you're in violation. I leave it as an exercise for future enterprising readers to work out which number on the receipt references the zone. Also, it's sometimes hard to tell where one zone ends and another begins.

In the second case, what I've done is an extension of the old "random acts of kindness" deed where do-gooders would pop nickels in dimes in expired meters as the parking patrol was driving up. The ordinance does not ban the transfer of receipts, although it does stipulate that the parker is supposed to go and get the receipt him or herself (i.e., by putting her or his own funds in the machine). I suppose that if the officer saw you do it, she could cite the other driver... or cite you for not having your own receipt any more. Of course, since the ordinance also excepts:

the time necessary to deposit United States coins in said parking meter so as to show, indicate, register, display, or permit legal parking

I suppose you could always argue that you haven't been there long enough to satisfy the foregoing.

More realistically, however, it's unlikely that your average parking enforcer or police officer is going to do much more than check the numbers for the time on displayed receipts. After all, there are a lot of parking spots out there and a limited number of officers to inspect them-- and most people are just going to either forget to pay and display or are going to misjudge their time.

It strikes me that what we've inadvertently created here is a new and odd sort of economy. According to the Oakland City Parking Meters webpage, parking in a metered spot costs $1 to $1.25 per hour. Obviously, if you intend to park for an entire day (10 hours), you're probably better off parking in a pay lot or hunting for one of those rare free parking spots, but if you're "just going to be a minute" here and there, it might be worth your while to buy up two hours and take your act on the road. Of course, under no circumstance would it be worth your while to get a scanner, a special printer, and GIMP and make up your own receipts; that would be illegal, and no one would do that.

Right?