We are repeating history. Having the meters in service later into the evening did not work before and would not work now. As has been pointed out over and over, restaurant owners themselves–and whom else are we supposedly doing all this for?–said that customers were complaining. The end time of the meters once again dropped to 6 PM, where it should stay. (This applies also to the Short Line lot on Route 17, where parking to go into the city for the day costs enough already, and a 12-hour meter limit might not even be long enough to cover someone going for the day and evening.) Raising parking meter fees and increasing hours would just make people go elsewhere. Thus the claimed parking shortage might be mitigated by having nobody wish to go downtown. If that’s the goal, we seem to be heading for it.
