Muni-meters and parking price hikes are making their way to Sunset Park. Many local residents are unhappy, seeing the meters not just as a new cost, but as cultural colonization.
“They’re Manhattanizing us,” said Jackie Barrios, co-owner of the Barrios Driving School on 5th Avenue. “I won’t be parking on 5th Avenue anymore.”
Or so she hopes. The meters are on the neighborhood’s main avenues, but on this day she could not find a meter-free place on a side street and had no choice but to pay up. She said that she and her instructors repeatedly have to run out of the school to refill the meter with quarters—and more of them as of this past month.
The Department of Transportation increased the price such that while a quarter once bought 20 minutes of parking, it now gets only 15 minutes.
Up next are the muni-meters. The DOT aims to make New York City a muni-meter-only city by next year.
Barrios mentions that the parking rate change has been a problem in the area. She says that people are forgetting to pay on time and are getting ticketed because they still haven’t assimilated the new prices. “I had a customer last week who had to run out after 20 minutes because he didn’t know about the change,” she said.
Manuel Palahuecho, who works at La Morenita Express, a car service in the neighborhood, is equally disconcerted with the arrival of the muni-meters. “I wasn’t aware that they were changing them,” he said. The new meters and rates will hurt his business, he said, visibly upset.
“It’s always like this in this country,” he said. “Everything is going up. Parking meters, tolls, parking tickets… Everything except salaries.”
Palahuecho says that he has used Muni-Meters before, but is still not sure how the work. He also doesn’t know if the meters will mean a further increase in parking prices. They won’t, the DOT says.
Muni-meters, which were tested as early as 1999 in New York City, have been popping up all over Manhattan since 2009. This year, after converting all of Manhattan, the DOT started taking the operation to the other boroughs. Brooklyn is next.
The schedule lists Park Slope and Borough Park, both adjacent to Sunset Park, as neighborhoods that will receive new meters in November. Sunset Park itself is not on the DOT list, but members of Community Board 7 said in their October meeting that the muni-meters would arrive in the neighborhood “in the next few weeks.”
“Travesty” was a word thrown around after the meters were announced.
There is a feeling of resignation in the front stoop of the Dominican Car Service, another 5th Avenue car business. Its drivers are also displeased with the recent changes. Julio Brega, one of them, complains that the paper slips for the Muni-Meters are always getting blown away by the wind, and are easy to lose.. “Then you get a fine,” he said. “It’s even worse when it rains.”
One of the other drivers cursed under his breath when Brega tells him about the new meters.
“We park here a lot,” said Brega, referring to the area in front of the business, which has parking meters. “We’ve always parked here. And we’re going to keep parking, because there is nowhere else.”
Barrios, Palahuecho and Brega were unaware of the installation of the new meters. Palahuecho was not happy because he didn’t see the point of the new meters after only two weeks of new prices. “It’s all geared towards fines,” he said.
They are not alone. Last month, Brooklyn Assemblyman William Colton declared publicly that the muni-meters were confusing, especially regarding left-over time from tickets.
But Barrios was able to find a little silver lining: “At least you can pay with a credit card, so you don’t have to look for quarters every time you want to park.”
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