Our View: Cash-strapped students should avoid meters

When the news first broke that CSULB would be getting rid of all the coin-operated parking meters on campus and replacing them with electronic pay stations, it seemed to make sense. People rarely carry change around anymore, and most college students need to save every quarter they have to pay for laundry, another one of the last coin-operated systems in existence.

Making the parking meters electronic meant that students could use credit cards to park, which makes using the metered spaces a lot easier.

Now that the pay stations have been in use for a few months, it is clear that this was nothing more than a way for the school to get more of our money with another unfair and annoying system.

The $2 price for an hour of parking has not changed, but for some reason the price to park for 2 hours has been raised to $5. This makes no sense at all.

Why would the school add an extra dollar to something that should obviously be a standard hourly rate?

There is no reason other than greed to justify getting charged an extra dollar just to buy 2 hours up front.

One of the main reasons why someone would need to use a parking meter instead of parking in the lot is because of the obvious close proximity to the building. People usually choose a meter because they are running late and can’t make it to their obligation on time.

Unfortunately, these electronic stations run painfully slow. This often leads to a line of people waiting to pay for their parking while their class starts without them.

Also, another one of the main features of a parking meter has been completely forgotten. People who need to park for 5 minutes to drop off something at Brotman Hall, or turn in an assignment for class will have to pay $2 for an entire hour of parking. There is no option for increments of time less than one hour. Students used to be able to throw a few quarters in the meter and go talk to their professor for 10 minutes.

Now, if a student doesn’t want to pay for a full hour, they will have to park in the structure and walk all the way across campus just to turn in something that should have taken them five minutes.

With all these people paying for hours of parking that they don’t need, you would think there would be some kind of overlap. If someone pays for an hour and leaves after 10 minutes, someone else should be able to park there for 50 minutes to use up the time.

That’s how most parking meters work, but not these ones. There is no way of knowing how much time has been paid for at any particular spot. This means that in the same one hour, three people could buy an hour of time for the same spot. This just seems wrong.

Parking at this school has always been a nightmare, and it does not seem like it will get any better. It seems unnecessary for the school to take away one of the few basic parking-related conveniences we had just so they can steal a few more dollars from cash-strapped students.