City Council votes to push back parking meter times

People parking in Oakland can look forward to a three-month reprieve from the summer’s 10 p.m…. People parking in Oakland can look forward to a three-month reprieve from the summer’s 10 p.m. enforcement time, but increased rates and restored hours will come with the new year.

A City Council vote Tuesday pushed parking meter enforcement back to 6 p.m. but only until the end of the year. In January, meter rates will jump from $1.50 to $2 an hour, and enforcement will go back to 10 p.m.

As part of Pittsburgh’s five-year pension bailout plan to maintain the city’s yearly operating budget, City Council passed Ordinance 43 in the spring, extending hours of parking-meter enforcement from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday in Oakland, Downtown, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill, South Side and the North Shore. The 10 p.m. parking meter times became effective June 1, along with increased parking meter rates throughout the city. The maximum meter rate in Oakland was raised to $1.50.  

City Council members said that they wanted to make a change after receiving complaints from city residents about the new hours and rates.

“Parking Authority was supposed to work on this from January to June,” City Council President Darlene Harris said. “They were supposed to have installed devices on the meters to allow the public to feed the meters for longer periods of time, as well as use their credit cards. However, we thought it was unfair that people have had to carry rolls of quarters around to feed the meters. People were getting tickets and were very inconvenienced.”

The Parking Authority was supposed to replace the single-space parking meters with more modern multi-space meters that accept credit cards and quarters, similar to the ones around Schenley Plaza.City Council plans to reimplement the extended hours of parking-meter operations beginning in 2012.

“A year is plenty of time for [Parking Authority] to arrange the necessary adjustments,” Harris said. “But the public needs to realize that if this was privatized, they would be paying even more for parking. If the system isn’t improved by January, business owners and the public need to complain to the mayor. He is the one who deals with Parking Authority.”

In April, Councilwoman and Parking Authority board member Natalia Rudiak said that the rate increases could rake in an additional $10.4 million a year for Parking Authority by 2017. The authority could potentially use the new meter revenue to repair some of the city’s parking garages.

“On Jan. 1, 2012, [the meter rates in Oakland] will be increased to $2 per hour,” John Fournier, a spokesman for Rudiak, said.

An increase in meter rates might not be as well-received by Pitt students, especially those who have already been affected by the increase in tuition this year.

“Honestly, it is absolutely ridiculous that they’re going to charge us even more for parking,” senior Courtney Thompson said. Thompson lives off campus and has a car. “Parking in Oakland is already expensive enough.”