Parking Solution for Springfield

There's something interesting about these pictures besides the fact that they were taken at the state capitol in Olympia, Washington. What's missing? Parking meters, of course. How do they pay for parking?

Instead of using parking meters, visitors and employees purchase parking at a few kiosks, where you receive a printout that shows you the precise time your parking expires. You keep the printout visible on your car's dashboard.

You can purchase up to ten hours at a time, I think, maybe more. If you are just visiting to run multiple errands, you don't need to keep feeding any parking meters and you don't have to worry about leaving excess time on a meter after you leave for your next destination.

You may be able to purchase and print a parking schedule online in advance. It would have a bar code for authentication and monitoring by parking enforcement.

Some areas around businesses only allow for 30 minute to 2 hour parking maximum. For this, your tire would be marked with yellow chalk, and even if you paid for several hours of parking, you would still need to move your vehicle to another spot, for the sake of the businesses.

There is potential to have certain tiers of temporary parking permits, with packages for daily, weekly, monthly, or annual parking for residents who live downtown. These could be special window stickers. Ultimately this eliminates the ugly old style parking meters.

Impatient Parking

The McDonalds on Chatham road just north of Wabash is a usual stop for breakfast for many people, and there are some who prefer to park and walk in for their food rather than gamble with the “Drive-Thru.”

There is plenty of parking on the west side of the building (where the above photo was taken), but some people have very little patience and think they are saving time by parking in the traffic lane, leaving their vehicles running, and walking the same distance to the same entrance used by people who park legally.

These vehicles are parking illegally, and by doing so leave themselves vulnerable to such consequences as losing their insurance, their jobs, their savings, or even their vehicles if they leave them unlocked with the keys in the ignition .

A McDonalds employee said there were a few who parked in the traffic lane just north of the building including government vehicles. There are police cars parked at the gas station on the corner of Chatham and Wabash, but not on the day the photo was taken.

The minivan in the photo was almost rear-ended by the sedan in the photo next to it, and two weeks earlier, I almost rear-ended the same vehicle.