Metered Parking for Downtown Raleigh

Yay.

That is my initial response. I'm not too incredibly thrilled about this, but before I go into a rant, here is a bit more about the story.

On Tuesday, City Council voted 7-0 to convert various downtown street hourly parking spaces into metered parking spaces. Here's the reason they gave:

"The purpose of the plan is to discourage long-term parking in on-street spaces so there is more turnover."

I can view that to be truthful, but there's just a tiny part me that thinks it is more than just the city's answer to relieving the stress of parking hunts. With the recent fee increase on parking fines, the state-wide budget cuts, and of course with the country's economic downfall, it makes me question just how much of the reason behind this new system is money-based. I'd completely understand if the main objective for this new system was to bring in a new means for city income, but can't they just admit to it if that were the case?

Being a downtown resident, I'm constantly having to struggle with friends and family on helping them find free parking close by. With this new system, it will surely discourage most of the people I know from coming to downtown. Of course, that may not be the case for most citizens since a dollar or two may not seem bothersome.

Even as mentioned on New Raleigh, this could be an effort to start getting more people using public transit, especially considering there will be a free downtown drunkulator, erm, circulator starting in February.

If this is a push for encouraging downtown transit usage, it seems to be one of the first real pushes the city has done then.

In final, I believe that this could be a good thing for the downtown visitors who only make it out to downtown on occasions and a potentially not-so-great thing for downtown residents who have cheap friends. Only time will tell!