Don't believe the sign
Parking meter signage exaggerates hours of enforcement
Traces of the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s aborted plan to extend parking meter enforcement until 10 p.m. in some areas still remain.
Overruled by Mayor Keith Wilson, PBOT reverted to free parking after 7 p.m. in the Northwest District, downtown and two Eastside areas. But memories endure—not to mention stickers on signs that still say 10 p.m.
Uninformed drivers taking the signs at their word by submitting payments during those three evening hours will learn the truth from a screen on the pay stations refusing payment, but that does not address those who might take the 10 p.m. demarcation as reason to avoid the area altogether.
“While Mayor Wilson rightfully intervened in October to place the extended hours on ‘pause,’ the policy was never fully rescinded,” stated a letter su mitted this month by the Northwest Parking Stakeholders Advisory Committee. “The SAC formally requests that the plan to extend metered hours be abandoned rather than simply paused.
“Compounding the frustration is the city’s failure to correct the street signage. For several months, parking meter signs throughout the Northwest District have incorrectly stated that enforcement extends until 10 p.m. The parking signage is complex in its current form, and now adds additional hurdles for visitors in that the signs are both complex and wrong.”
Cinema 21 owner Tom Ranieri sees something beyond negligence in the agency’s failure to update the signs.
“Not taking off those signs suggests that there is something else afoot,” Ranieri said at the April SAC meeting. “It engenders a feeling that they’re staying up because we haven’t seen the end of this.
“PBOT needs to acknowledge that they’ve heard the public … and can be trusted to do the right thing.”
The SAC letter also questioned PBOT’s motives.
“The original agreement establishing the Northwest Parking District explicitly states that parking rates and enforcement times are intended solely as tools for managing public parking demand and turnover. The district was never intended to operate as a tax district. It is entirely inappropriate to treat the Northwest parking district as a revenue-generating venue to plug structural holes in city budgets.”
Unbelievable. At a time when PBOT is crying poverty and city council is looking for multiple ways to continue fleecing the taxpaying public for more monies. Approximately one year ago, PBOT came and filled a pothole on my street. They left seven construction barriers behind, saying they would be back “after lunch” to get them. They never returned. Four were stolen. Three still remain. Despite various efforts to get them to pick them up, nothing has happened. Their department needs a full audit to see where the dollars are going.