After months of delay, the long anticipated smart meters finally hit the streets and parking lots of Brookline this spring. They have not been a big hit so far, and issues need to be addressed. Look out Greater Boston; you’re next to join the new world of parking meter collections.
Personally, I agree with the smart meter gripes, with one exception. The parking meter issues don’t warrant going elsewhere. I’m not going to a mall unless it’s to watch a demolition crew blow it up. It costs 75 cents an hour and a little hassle to go to Coolidge Corner. You couldn’t pay me ten times that to park at a mall for free.
Last fall I served a four to six hour sentence at a Mall and left completely rehabilitated. They’ll have to shoot me to get me to go back. Brookline is eclectic, vibrant and alive. Malls are the product of decision by committee, void of any imagination. Miss one on the highway and you might well just go to the one at the next exit. They are all the same.
You can get food in Brookline made by people. Different kinds of food made from people who live for what they do, with skills learned from all over the world. Shopping malls have food courts. A court is a place you go to see if a crime was committed. Food courts represent crimes against the stomach. The food at malls is not expensive. it just sucks. It’s food mass-manufactured by corporations. Food courts are breeding grounds for diabetes, colitis, and all sorts of intestinal conditions. I’ve yet to find the link between pharmaceutical companies and food courts, but there has to be one.
The worst kinds of malls are the ones that try to resemble the real world, like Legacy Place. Legacy Place is the alternate reality for people who haven’t taken enough field trips from the suburbs. Did you ever watch the movie, “The Truman Show”? Truman spent his whole life trying to get out of there. Legacy Place is for people who think Epcot is the world and not just the Disney version of it.
If parking in Brookline is a nuisance, there are better ways to get here. Tens of thousands of people live within walking distance of Brookline’s commercial areas. Hundreds of thousands can take public transportation. Brookline has more bike lanes per capita than Beijing.
If anyone is to blame for the $1,460,000 expenditure in the new meters, I can’t find that person. To the best of my knowledge, all our elected leaders voted for them and there was no public outcry when they did. The old meters were breaking frequently and they were old. It’s hard to argue that something with the word “smart” in its name isn’t better than something with the word “old” in it. Communities all over the world are turning to them. They cost less to maintain when they are working correctly and they help local government produce more revenue at a time when local government is hurting. Consumers don’t like them. Nobody likes them. Nobody likes to pay to park as it is, dealing with a computer that costs more and does less then your home computer doesn’t make the experience better.
In a press release Tuesday, our proactive new Town Administrator took a step in the right direction by announcing the formation of a task force to address the situation. There is nothing about the issue that levelheaded, solution-oriented people can’t address. We don’t have to like the new meters, but they should at least work.
The vote is a million to none against the smart meters. But please, please, please, don’t tell me that you would rather go to the mall! Grow your own food and make your own cloths first. Anything but the mall!!!
R. Harvey Bravman, Publisher
