These devices allow New York City to price some of the most valuable land in the world.
Starting in the 90s, NYC began replacing its traditional parking meters with these blue-grey obelisks called MuniMeters.
Parking meters found their way into NYC in the early 50s, an era when the city started reconsidering its parking situation.
Up until that point, the city had a blanket ban on overnight parking, and in general parking had historically been limited to an hour or so. But, in 1950, the city legalized free overnight parking, creating the alternate side parking program we still have today. And then, only a year later, despite heavy opposition, the first parking meters appeared on the streets.
From their initial placements in Harlem, parking meters slowly spread out across the city. But, by the late 90s, the city decided it was time for a change, and so they started experimenting with new MuniMeters.
Rather than drop a coin into a meter at a specific space, drivers would now enter their license plate info and receive a receipt they could display on their dashboard. Already popular in Europe, the city pitched MuniMeters as good for both drivers and the city. Drivers could more easily fill the available space, rather than being forced into predetermined parking spot sizes.
But it was clear the main benefit was for the city revenue. MuniMeters removed the ability for time to be left on the meter. And as the city finalized their roll-out in the late aughts, they made sure to tie them to Wi-Fi, allowing the city to remotely set parking rates.
By 2011 all of the old parking meters were gone from Manhattan, but the city did find a use for the old poles. They found a new life as bike racks, riffing on the city’s standard “Large Hoop” bike rack design.
Since their introduction to the city, parking meters have been contentious. Lloyd Reid, traffic commissioner at the time, said he “had no intention of blanketing the city with parking meters,” and even though there certainly are more metered spots today, this sentiment still remains.
There are nearly 3 million on-street parking spaces in NYC and less than 3% of them are metered.
In a city where every square foot of real estate becomes more expensive year over year, parking has become a potentially attractive source of more revenue.
So what do you think? Do you like the MuniMeters, or do you miss the old style parking meters? Do you think we need more metered spaces or fewer?