CURRENCY WATCH : Common Cents

A dollar bill is of little use when you need coins to feed a parking meter, use a vending machine or make a phone call. Mass transit agencies could save loads of money if they did not have to sort the paper currency that many riders use to pay fares. Maybe it’s time to take another look at using a coin in place of the dollar bill.

We can hear you groaning. Sure, everybody wants to forget--and almost has--the disastrous Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, introduced in 1979. It was a flop because it was easy to confuse with a quarter, and the paper dollar was not phased out in order to encourage widespread use of the Anthony coin. In fact, millions of these coins remain in warehouses--at great expense to the government. Perhaps they could be melted down into a new dollar coin?

Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-Pico Rivera), who has introduced dollar-coin legislation with Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), believes that the time is right for public acceptance of a better-designed dollar coin, gold in color to differentiate it from a 25-cent piece.

In keeping with the current mood of cost cutting, switching to coins would save money. The General Accounting Office has estimated that using a coin would save the government $395 million a year because coins stay in circulation longer--30 years, compared to the dollar bill’s average life span of only 17 months.

The switch to coins would save a city like Los Angeles $4 million a year by eliminating the labor-intensive task of counting dollar bills collected in bus fares.

A better-designed dollar coin makes a lot of sense.