Wheelchair Users Unable To Pay Parking Fee In City Parking Lot
The City of St. Louis Parking Division operated by the Treasurer’s office recently built a surface parking lot at 3019-35 Olive Street to serve Midtown Alley businesses, including Hamburger Mary’s next door. The parking fee must be paid 24 hours per day.
I’ll be interested to find out if the Board of Public Service designed this for the Treasurer or if it was done separately. Regardless, it must be changed to comply with the ADA.
Larry Williams, the current Treasurer, is in his last month in office. Tishaura Jones will be sworn in as Treasurer on New Year’s Day. Jones indicated during the primary she’d work to remove parking as a responsibility of the office.
— Steve Patterson
Yep, huge city fail. Someone didn’t bother to think….again.
Saying that, does this machine allow for mobile payment (can’t tell from the photo). I ask because I was using a similar device at the University of Calgary last week and payment could be handled via text messaging. Assuming it does, that ought to take care of 99.9% of the problem for the short term.
A case of conflicting priorities. The curb is there to help prevent the multi-meter / payment machine from getting hit by vehicles. Adding a ramp would make the machinery more vulnerable to vehicular damage. (Not an excuse, just trying to understand the logic behind the choices – it would have been cheaper and easier to just pour a small concrete pad, to anchor the device, at grade.)
A side observation – the warning sign says “You can pay at the multi-meters on the lot”, implying that more than one is available. Is more than one? Is one accessible?
Bigger picture, since this is a new city lot, why is there no landscaping? Why is the site lighting the cheapest option available, a wood pole with “glare bombs” stuck on top? The cheesy fence is one small step in better urban design, but I would have expected a much better overall “urban” statement from our “leaders”.