meter maid madness

Last week as I was walking out of work I saw a sight that most people cringe at. I saw a parking meter attendant writing a ticket. Most people who work, live, or visit an inner-city area know the feeling of returning to their car to find they have gotten a ticket. Fortunately, I was not the person being ticketed. Nevertheless, there was one thing that I was deeply annoyed with. The thing that annoyed me the most was that the parking attendant was driving an SUV paid for by the city of Camden. It is no secret that I hate SUVs. In my opinion they use to much gas and they are not safe, but, whatever. This SUV used by the state highlights a greater issue.

The first issue with this practice is cost. The SUV is not the most cost effective vehicle a city can buy. I also think that a parking meter attendant does not need a high performance vehicle to write tickets. I gave the city the benefit of the doubt by assuming that this fleet of cars was being shared by other departments when they are not being used for the task of writing parking tickets. This could be a potential way for a city to save money. I DON’T THINK THIS IS THE CASE. I talked to several city employees and they said these vehicles were used specifically by the parking authority by the meter attendants. If that is the case then this is huge waste of money.

The second issue I have with this practice is the issue of gas usage. The SUV is one of the most inefficient vehicles on the road. Everyone is saying that they want to be environmentally friendly, then a fleet of the most ecologically unfriendly cars is brought by the state. There has been lots of talk about less dependence on foreign oil, yet this city has decided to buy a fleet of these things to do mundane tasks that could be performed by a car that uses less gas. I wonder how much money the city of Camden paid to gas up these SUVs when gas went up to four dollars a gallon. How much money will the city of Camden continue to pay in the future?

Lots of people would argue that I am making a big deal out of this. They would argue that the cost and the gas use is a drop in the bucket when you consider the over all size of these problems. I would reply by saying that the city of Camden has a population of 79,000 people according to the US census. There are 286 US cities with a population between 50,000 and 80,000 people. How significant are the numbers if all of these cities have a fleet of SUV’s for their meter maids. These numbers aren’t even taking into account the big cities. I am an optimist so I will assume that not all cities are as badly mismanaged as the city of Camden, but if this trend continues in other cities the results could be at the very least counter productive.

The issue to me is not that the city of Camden has a few meter maids that drive SUVs. The issue is the opportunities that are lost by state and local governments to affect change. The state government has a chance to effect policy in a big way. By making a statement that they will buy fuel efficient vehicles, the city would be creating a market for these vehicles in addition to the short term economic cost. If all the cities with populations less then 100,000 people would do this, the effect may be even more significant. What if we extended this policy to state buildings being more energy efficient? How much money would a city save in the long run because of better energy costs?

What ever has happened, the fact remains that these cars have already been brought and are being used. I do not think that it is good policy in the middle of a recession for a city to replace all of its vehicles. What I do think should happen is that every vehicle that has to be replaced should be replaced with something OTHER THAN AN SUV!!! Since the city will eventually have to replace these vehicles why not replace them with something that is better for our economy and our environment in the long run. Every new vehicle that should be brought in the future should be fuel efficient. To the cities with populations over 80.000 people (there are 314 of them) any improvements made to taxi fleets, public transportation, and what ever other stuff they need should be made with fuel standards in mind. Cities could just set there own standards in terms of the construction of buildings. The building may cost more to build but you would hire more people to build it and YOU WOULD SAVE MONEY IN THE LONG RUN BECAUSE YOU WOULD HAVE LESS ENERGY COST. We can’t "unspill" the milk but we can make sure that we don’t spill the milk again.

On a happy note. Last weekend I drove to Giants Stadium. When I was on the turnpike I saw….

A New York City HYBRID yellow cab. At least Michael Bloomberg agrees with me!