One tough Reporter

We all read them or watch them. The “Watchdogs” of the media. Got a problem…give it to them to investigate.

In Cambridge, MA they have a problem. They have a policy of allowing only one hour of free parking when parking meters are broken, instead of the two-hour paid maximum. Why? Why can’t you park for two hours?

The Boston Globe was put on the case.

The city responded …

Despite their old-fashioned look, the city just completed replacing the inner mechanisms in all 6,159 single-space meters last week, said Thomas Tinlin, commissioner of the Boston Transportation Department. The new workings will make the meters “a little harder to put out of order,” said James Mansfield, a department spokesman.

The vast majority of broken meters – nearly 98 percent – are the result of people damaging them to avoid paying meter fees and side-stepping a ticket for an expired meter, he said. Though maintenance crews follow regular routes to inspect meters, enforcement officers and collection agents visit meters every day and often report broken ones.

Once identified, there’s about a 24-hour turnaround for most repairs, said Tinlin. The city is considering taking out some of the coin-operated single-space meters and installing multi-space meters like those on Newbury and Boylston streets and the Back Bay cross streets between them, said Mansfield, but that idea is still in the early planning stages. The city now has about 60 such meters in operation, including 30 that were installed in the Charlestown Navy Yard last November that are “much improved” in terms of breakdowns, said Tinlin. But they are expensive and require extra sidewalk space, so they may not work in every district that wants them, said Mansfield.

That’s it. They never answer the question why only one hour to park when the meter is broken instead of the two hour maximum. And, this tough investigative reporter files the story.

Local elected officials take their lumps … but the bozos reporting on them are even worse.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 5:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.