Electronic Parking Meters

* Re “New Parking Meter Has a Brain but No Heart,” May 20: In Pacific Palisades the mechanical parking meters were replaced with electronic ones a year or so ago. Their main unfriendly innovation was that you could no longer see as you approached in your car whether there was time left on the meter. However, their failure rate has been tremendous; when I step around to pay I frequently find the meter flashing “Fail” or “Dead,” and it’s much more common than before to see paper bags and taped notes fluttering over them.

The meter officers who used to patrol the village have been less in evidence lately. I can’t imagine that the whole business has resulted in net revenue gain except for the manufacturers of the meters, who probably get paid to repair them too. For Newport Beach’s sake, I hope they bought theirs from a different supplier.

BILL ELLIOTT

Pacific Palisades

*

Let me express my continuing ire at the premise that cities have the right to rent to taxpayers what they already own. Cities, counties and states do not own anything. Everything they use is with the permission of the people. To say that Newport Beach has installed meters in Balboa that disallow people from daily use is an unconstitutional disenfranchisement.

Parking meters are a great source of income for cities, both in the quarters that are required for rental and the tickets that will be issued for expiration. This is again an issue of unfairness that will cause ordinary people to become scofflaws. They will merely come back every two hours, back their car out of the space and reenter and reload the meter. Who determined that a person does not have the right to rent a parking space all day long? Better question, why?

CHAS E. MOSER

Anaheim