Parking Meters & Maids Everywhere!

By June 30, more than 5,000 "seven-day" meters should be in place throughout the borough mainly in busy commercial areas that will benefit from the high-turnover of parked cars, even on a Sunday, says de Bourbon.as that will benefit from the high-turnover of parked cars, even on a Sunday, says de Bourbon. A half-century ago, New York City officials turned to parking meters as an experimental way of freeing up spots on crowded streets.
Today, that experiment has ballooned into a bureaucratic behemoth, encompassing 68,000 meters across the city, sections of two mayoral agencies the Departments of Transportation and Finance and the traffic control division of the New York Police Department.
In 1935, Oklahoma City was the first municipality to adopt meters, with New York City following suit 15 years later.
The Traffic Department installed the citys first meters in 1951. Motorists could park their vehicles for ten cents an hour.
Nine years later, the city created a unit of civilian parking meter attendants comprised entirely of women.
The first group of 100 "meter maids," as they were soon nicknamed, went through a short two-week training session that included some classes in the martial arts, according to a "History of the Parking Enforcement District" on the NYPD Web site.
Over the next six months, the attendants handed out more than 200,000 tickets for parking meter violations, at a cost of $5 per ticket.
Jump ahead to 2003: parking meters have a strong record as money-makers for the city, bringing in tens of millions of dollars each year, and the city keeps expanding their use and raising fines.
They also boost business along busy commercial strips, claims Lisi de Bourbon, a spokesperson for the DOT.
"The purpose of the meters is to give as many people as possible a shot at a parking spot," she said. "And they allow more cars to park in front of a store."
During the 2002 fiscal year, the citys meters brought in $73 million. Between 2001 and 2002, the number of tickets issued for meter violations jumped from 1,121,329 to 1,239,533, according to "The New York City Motorists Parking Survival Guide."
Last year, the Bloomberg administration also hiked up the fines, bringing some to as much as $105. Queens has 19,000 parking meters. There are three primary types the electronic meters, with quartz automated timers; the muni-meters, which issue tickets that drivers place in their windows; and the classic mechanical parking meter, famous for it manually operated lever.
The citys 2,177 "meter maids" are now known as traffic enforcement agents, and since 1996, they have been part of the NYPD Traffic Control Division. At present, 299 traffic agents are assigned to Queens streets.
New Yorks current fiscal crisis has already forced the DOT to suspend free Sunday parking in the city.