Thoughts on Rochester: The Cost of Parking

In my final hours living in upstate New York, perhaps it is time to reflect on this place where I have spent the past nine weeks.

First of all, and I can't believe I haven't blogged about this earlier, the parking meter system here makes no sense at all.

And no, I'm not just bitter about that ticket I got on June 17 on Saint Paul Street. (Interesting note: on the signs, that particular road is listed as "St. Paul St.", which makes me wonder: is that Saint Paul Street, or is it Street Paul Street? Or maybe Street Paul Saint? Such is Rochester.)

The easiest way to explain the parking system here is to say this: for every coin you put in the meter, you receive minutes that equals the value of the coin, plus one. So, for a nickel you get six minutes; for a dime, you get 11 minutes; and for a quarter, you get 26 minutes.

Here's the problem I have: lets say you deposit 25 cents in the form of a quarter. The meter will give you 26 minutes. However, if you deposit 25 cents (the same amount of money!) in the form of five nickles, you'll receive 30 minutes of ticket-free parking.

So, in Rochester, not all cents are created equal. I don't understand why the city would want to incentivize people to use smaller denomination coins in the parking meters, and I really don't understand why an equal amount of money does not purchase an equal amount of product. Isn't the point of a central monetary system to get rid of issues like this?

For example, way back when, each colony (and eventually state) had their own currency. In the Constitution, they agreed to allow the federal government to issue and print money, mostly because it was too confusing to have to figure out how much 25 cents of Connecticut money could buy versus 25 cents of New York money.

Obviously, this is a smaller scale than that, but it still confuses me. What's worse, as the amount of time you are purchasing gets larger, the difference in cost grows. If you have enough nickels, you only have to spend $1.00 to get a full two hours. On the other hand, four quarters only buys you a hour and 44 minutes.

This has bothered me non-stop for the better part of the past nine weeks, I'll give a prize to anyone who can explain it to me.