On Monday November 5^th 2005 the world has changed as we know it.   This week paid parking in little old downtown Truckee went into effect.

This topic has been a subject of heated debate for years.  However, only one small faction of the town actually desires the paid parking.  I would play 20 questions with you, but is too obvious of an answer.  The business owners have been pushing for this for as long as I have lived here.  Other than the business owners the only other group that really pushes for it are the owners of the buildings.  See, the business owners think if there is paid parking in downtown Truckee it equals more business.  The building owners think if there is more business then, they can justify jacking up the already outrageous lease prices even more.  Publicly the business owners will say that the tickets(I mean the paid parking) will result in greater access to a greater variety of customers.   Privately though, they will tell you that the paid parking means greater access to non-local customers.  You see, the locals figured out long ago that while the authentic “Truckee” bags and the tag are really cool, it just makes more sense to get 5 tea candles for 1 dollar at Longs rather than 1 tea candle for 25 dollars downtown.  So, the locals don’t really spend too much time actually “purchasing” things in downtown Truckee, especially if it doesn’t pour into a glass.  So, I guess it makes sense to discourage the locals from taking up valuable “customer” parking spaces.

Lets talk about how this parking system works.  The town of course wanted to provide the least imposing, easiest to use method to administer the system.  Usually, there is a special emphasis put on the look and feel of any project affecting the downtown corridor to insure that any new building fits into the character of downtown.  They must have decided to skip this step when it came to this new parking system.  Instead, they scattered a bunch of these new fangled high-tech parking machines around the downtown corridor.  These machines look kind of like the machines at the Reno airport that you use to validate your tickets. 

1)Park your car.
2)Then, you get out, climb over the snow berm, and walk to the closest parking machine.
3)You can then conveniently purchase parking time even by using your credit card.
4)Get a little receipt out of the machine.
5)Now, walk back towards your car and climb over that snow berm again, be careful not to slip.
6)Now put the little parking receipt on your windshield.
7)Now you can shop for $25 tea candles.

In all seriousness does this really make sense?  First of all, I am trying to understand why we couldn’t use traditional parking meters.  You know, the type that you park your car in front of, put some money in and walk away.  Second of all, I am trying to conceive how paper receipts in the windshield and snow storms mix.  The poor parking attendant is going to have to constantly clean off vehicle’s windshields in order to read a little paper receipt to determine if you deserve a ticket or not.  Wouldn’t it have been easier if they could have just glanced at the parking meter with it’s big green or red indicator in the glass window?  Maybe they only plan on enforcing the paid parking during the summer?  In all seriousness, this new parking scheme does not fit the character of Truckee.  It doesn’t fit the character of any town.  If we are going to make people pay for parking, I would think we could at least have the courtesy to make it convenient.  From now on, the tourists’ first experience when they enter into downtown Truckee will be figuring out how to work the parking system.  I don’t think this is good for business.  A parking system like this clearly has its place and it isn’t in a 2 block long shopping area it is in a parking garage.  Maybe they got a deal on it from ebay!

I left out the one real beneficiary in this whole quagmire.  The first thing anyone thinks of when they hear of paid parking is of course parking tickets.  Although reasonable priced, these 12$ tickets will surely benefit the town pocketbook and this small town has big goals, so it is no surprise that the town allowed this to happen.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if by some kind of conspiracy the downtown business owners were duped by the town into this whole thing.  I learned one thing about this town long ago, and that is that this small town has big politics.  If the town really just wanted to benefit the business owners they could have left the current chalk line parking system in place and just shortened the allowed parking time period.  The real disappointment is that the town implemented this so poorly. 

In the end, the town will be the only winner.  The business owners might actually lose business from this system as tourists will be either discouraged from even stopping to shop downtown or their shopping experience will be shortened as they are gouged for parking before they can even be gouged by the high priced stores.  Additionally, business owners might lose money because they are getting forced into a situation where they have compensate shoppers by validating parking tickets.