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Muni-Meters Come to Sunnyside

The base-component of the muni-meter covered by the orange cone

Dec. 4, 2012 By Christian Murray

Muni-meters are starting to appear in Sunnyside.

In the past few days, the Department of Transportation has been inserting the base component of the meters into the sidewalk throughout the North side of Queens Blvd.

It is part of the department’s plan to roll them out throughout Sunnyside—as they are being expanded borough wide.

The advantage with muni-meters is that a greater number of cars can park within a district, said Joe Conley, chairman of Community Board 2. People tend to park closer together than with single-spaced, metered-parking. The implementation of the muni-meters is not about raising revenue, he said.

The new muni-meters take quarters, $1 coins and credit or debit cards. Drivers typically buy units of time, usually in 15-minute intervals. They are then issued with tickets that they place on their dashboards.

The cost is 25 cents per 15 minutes, with varying duration periods.

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25 Comments

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SuperWittySmitty

No thanks. I feel as if it is your dismissive tone and self-righteous attitude that dragged this conversation down in the first place. I posted my opinion and you basically labeled it an obnoxious rant, assuming I was some sort of carpetbagging hipster who had no right to embrace our changing culture and express my thoughts.

Choose your words more carefully in the future and these posts won’t become rude. It’s normal to want to defend ones position, especially when it’s greeted with derision. But when you see me pedaling my red bike around the neighborhood (I do it safely and with respect for the law) you can wave & I will stop and say hello. 🙂

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Sycamore

@ Anonymous If you would like to resume this discussion in person I will be happy to meet you any evening this week after seven for a cup of coffee. Just let me know, otherwise, drop the insulting tone. We can have a disagreement without being slimy. I say let’s bring this out in the open. We can post the results of our meeting on this page, showing people discussions don’t have to end in the gutters.

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Anonymous

No wonder there is so much congestion and such a lack of parking. I do not think we should give up any more space- in some countries, you have to prove you have a parking space before you are allowed to purchase a vehicle.

Slowly but surely, this idea that the city owes these car-owners public space on which to park their cars will recede and retreat, just like Sycamore.

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Anonymous

I wasn’t apologizing, and I appreciate that you assume I am a “young” person but I am in my mid-fifties. Again, consider that the vast majority of Sunnysiders (and residents of NYC, in general) do NOT own a car and probably never will, yet we see more and more of our community being given over to those that do. You may not realize this but the car culture is yesterday’s idea and it is a culture that isn’t sustainable. If you want to worry about where you will park today, fine; in ten years from now, this problem is only going to become worse. Ignore the future at your own risk. (Was that you on line a few weeks ago, because of the gas shortage? Most of us did not have this problem.)

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Sycamore

P.S. You don’t realize it, but you are buying into the new “strategy” the powers that be have promulgated. And promoting it for them, too!

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Sycamore

Your apology is accepted. But you seemed to get all worked up again. The second rant seemed much more purposeful and angry. That’s on you. I did the walking and the biking when I was much younger. For various important reasons I don’t do those two or the subway anymore. No one every complained about cars until the redevelopment of this area. Now we all have to deal with the ubiquitous obnoxious opinions of young people who have no idea what growing older is like. My guess is you will feel some shame at your righteousness as you mature.

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Anonymous

Hi Sycamore,

Didn’t mean to post anonymously and didn’t mean to “rant” and be anti-car (I’ve owned quite a few myself.) I was trying to advocate intelligent pre-planning for the community in which I live, a community in which, by the way, most of us do NOT own cars, yet are constantly having to deal with increasingly obnoxious by-products of those few who insist they need one.

If I lived in the suburbs, I might agree that we have no choice but accept this “strategy” that you mention, but that’s not really the truth. There are ample means of transportation in Sunnyside for getting around; the lease efficient of which is the personal automobile. But hey, go ahead and don’t think about the future. Waiting for Washington and Detroit to come up with a solution sounds like a great idea. Maybe they will need more money to study this problem further. I wonder where these funds will come from. Meanwhile, I will use my legs and my bike and focus on something else. Have a Merry Christmas.

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Dog Park < Parking Problems

I wish some one can build a big ass parking garage underground somewhere in the neighborhood, or like in europe where most new buildings build a garage underneath their buildings. :/

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Sycamore

@ Anonymous Of course someone has to chime in with the anti-car rant. God bless you, but we drive cars because that was the political and economic strategy foisted upon us by Washington and Detroit many years ago. When they come up with a new way to get around that will make them money, we will all be traveling that way. Until then, please, we all understand the argument, you don’t have to bring it up. This is about parking spaces. @ Mike Novak You have a private garage for your car, so you might consider recusing yourself from this argument. We who hunt late into the night for a place to put the vehicle are so often slammed with massive tickets and expensive tows for one thing after another we just don’t like being nickled and dimed, too. If you think the city did it just to make more parking spots, you have a wide streak of naivety.

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Anonymous

There are way too many cars on the streets anyway, in my opinion. We devote so much space to these machines, many of which are used infrequently and if it were not for street cleaning would remained in the same parking space and not be driven for long periods of time. How many more cars can our streets handle? How many actual parking spaces are their in Sunnyside? How many of our residents own cars? And where will we be in 10-20 years? Unless they are either creating more space in which to park or much smaller automobiles, we will probably not find a balance any time soon.

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Native NYer

Mike: I was not implying that adding quarters was difficult as your snotty response posits. Let me give you a simple example. I pick my son up from school and usually put in one quarter. Sometimes we go to the park and there is 10 minutes remaining on the receipt. I have to get another receipt that starts at the time I get the new receipt, which means I lose 10 minutes of money. No, it is not a ton of money but it is annoying. I was in Portland recently and the muni-meters dealt in 5 minute increments.

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Mike Novak

It means MORE SPOTS PER BLOCK.

“Inherited Time” is not a right.

Time is sold in 15 minute increments. If you can’t do the math to determine if you have to pay 25 or 50 cents to park, you need serious help.

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Native NYer

Ruben: If you mean me, Native NYer, as a “hipster”, you made me laugh out loud. If hipster means middle aged Mom, you got it. BTW, I hate coffce and I think $4 bucks for any beverage is ridiculous.

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Ruben

so let me get this straight, you hipsters are totally ok with spending 4 bucks for a coffee but are gonna bitch about 25 cents and a few minutes?

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Native NYer

Mo’ money for the city with muni-meters.
1) No “inherited” time from previous parker at meter
2) In a meter, if you add time you still have the time already on the meter. With muni-meter, you can’t “get credit” for time you might have on a previous receipt.

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Angray

Meters are spaced out and usually gives extra space per spot. If a given block has 10 meters, and meters are taken out you can probably fit 13 cars. Regardless, any way you slice it = more money for the city.

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Bliss & Skillman

“People tend to park closer together than with single-spaced, metered-parking.”

What does this mean?

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Ruben

The red zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in a white zone

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Sycamore

If it weren’t about increasing revenue then why are they under the el? The city makes tons of money on the spots when people pay for more time than they use. No one gets a few free minutes at a meter someone has already paid for. Please don’t write with such gullibility. Get the other side before you publish, please.

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tempus fugit

Just a more efficient way to squeeze the citizenry for $$$$.

That’s all you are to the government. A cash cow.

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