Parking Meters Today

Finding information about Parking meters was hard enough, especially because with the new technology, there are many different kinds of meters and models. It wasn't so much the meter itself that interested me, but the jobs, financing and other technologies that had to do with paid public parking in general.I checked out a New York Times article that had to do with parking meters in their infancy, but that wasn't my focus, so I entered "parking meters" in the search field of the NY Times site and found a rather interesting article on the City of Chicago and their steps to privatize public parking, but brought the city something like $1.2 billion in revenue, which was a foundation of the City's budget, seeing as how it was such a large sum of money and Chicago, like everyone else is trying to refine their budget in the economic times. After I got useful information that article I began to look back in the search terms and found one more on San Francisco and the common theme among the various articles was that public parking was so much a part of large cities budgets, they probably couldn't do without it. Also, I found that these larger cities were all looking to somehow make the parking business more efficient through the use of technologies to make it easier for patrons to pay, easily find a spot and increase the turnover of parking spaces that were vital to a city's economy. I had never realized, living in Western New York, where the parking meter technology isn't exactly state of the art, how much effort was going into making the burden fall less onto the patrons and more into the hands of a municipality.

My next task was to find the different variations of public parking throughout the U.S. and even in other countries. On a whim, I did a Google search and came up with this website authored by a man who used to work for the Oklahoma City Parking Authority and was extremely interested in the different technologies and methods of controlling public parking. Unfortunately, the man died about ten years ago, but his site lives, with some useful information. For example, in the U.K handheld parking meters are used get information from the internet about people who had prepaid for a parking pass for a certain spot and knew the description of the car and the license plate number within a matter of seconds, so that no one else was allowed to take that prepaid spot. Also, the devices would allow the Parking Attendants to direct people to open spaces, also made available through a computer network. Also, in the UK as well as in America, people  can pay with any form of payment -cash, credit, debit. Also, the stations where one pays for parking are starting to be more centralized, eliminating the mechanical meters that most of us think of when we envision parking meters. The new feature of these centralized stations is a printed receipt that displays the time, date, and meter location, and how much time one has purchased, instead of a meter counting down the minutes.

Overall, I was surprised at how much information there was about parking meters and how important the revenue they generate is to city pocketbooks. The man from Oklahoma City, now deceased, really gave a nice summary, which I used as a starting point for my research. His efforts were not wasted when he made that site.

Village of Kenmore

I wanted to take a closer look at the Village of Kenmore, because living in Amherst, I get to see the lovely Village of Williamsville quite often, so I thought, why not?

Kenmore is a small village, only 1.2 square miles, yet was rated as one of the top 10 most desirable places to live in the United States in 2009. It has it's own police department, trash services and highway department. The stretch on Delaware Ave. from Euclid to Delaware Rd. is the part where it really feels like you can just go for a walk in a community, in the truest sense of the word. Many houses in Kenmore began being constructed in the early 1900's, with the second wave coming right after World War II. The stores that line Delaware Ave. are from between the turn of the 20th century and about the late 1940's.

 

 

 This particular building is a unisex barber shop on the southeast corner of Delaware Ave. and Euclid Ave. Above the business is an active apartment that looks to be from the early 20th century because of the window crowns in the brick (better view in the top picture. The barber shop was not open when I went, but there is also a partial fire escape at the back of the building leading from the above apartment. In my opinion, I believe that at one time, the whole dwelling was a house for a well-off family that "pulled themselves up by the bootstraps" in the Industrial age. It would have been a modest home, but large nonetheless. The only discernible repair from the original design is on the front, where there is a stone facade.

I noticed a pattern with the window crowns on the whole street and it made me think that all of these buildings were built in the same 20-year period. Also, a pattern that arose was the occupancy of apartments above the businesses. This was one of a few that had some sort of remodeling done to the front of the building to make it look more modern, but in no way changed the structure of the building.

Located at the northwest corner of Lincoln Blvd. and Delaware Ave, this was a rather odd building in that it curved around the side and didn't come to a point. As one can see, the "Dollar General" sign was affixed to the front of the building and made no attempt to cover up any part of the structure as some businesses do with old buildings, part of the reason Kenmore still looks like a village because it integrates commercializing while still keeping the character of the building.

Kenmore is still a village that has a strong sense of community. Even though many cars traverse Delaware Ave. daily, they are kept in check at a strict speed of 30mph and the Kenmore Police are waiting. However, even though many buildings in the Village are from the early 20th century, Kenmore maintains a character that very few can claim, that small town feel where a family can go for a walk down Delaware or someone can ride their bike, or maybe even sit at the gazebo on the corner of Delaware Ave. and Delaware Rd. and watch the slow- moving traffic hum along. Parents don't have to fret over their children walking to school or to a friend's house because sidewalks are everywhere ( so are the stop signs) and that's what makes Kenmore remain a community-oriented village.