Medical parking users can’t ‘pay it forward’ now
A medical centre parking lot where for years patients would “pay it forward” by passing on their partly used pay-and-display stub so complete strangers could park for free, has plenty of livid customers these days.
“I’m furious,” Mary Piccinin said Thursday, after encountering a new parking system in the sprawling lots behind the three-building medical centre at Howard Avenue and Tecumseh Road.
For the last decade, vehicle owners paid the machines $3 for up to two hours, and if your appointment took just 45 minutes, you’d pass that stub with 85 minutes of remaining time to a thankful person just arriving.
It was a common example of Windsor people being nice. Oftentimes, people would go to pay at the machine only to find a stub with time remaining stuffed into the outlet.
But new machines, installed a month ago, require drivers to type in their licence plate number first. The stub drivers display on their dash includes that number and if the number doesn’t match your plate, drivers can get a ticket. It’s clearly an attempt to prevent a second parker from using a first parker’s unused minutes, according to the lot’s angry customers, made up mostly of seniors and people bringing their elderly parents to appointments.
“People are supposed to be helping each other out, paying it forward and we can’t do that,” said Piccinin, who was taking her mother, Yvonne Faoro, to the first of two medical appointments that day.
The parking has already been paid for, so you should be able to give the time remaining to someone else, said another exasperated parker, Lisa Palazzolo.
“They want to make money, that’s all it is.”
According to the property manager at the medical centre, the new system was actually intended to make parking better for customers. But after receiving “many comments” from unhappy people, “we are exploring other systems,” said Nadia Hindi.
She said when a new company, THMC Windsor Inc., purchased the medical centre on Oct. 1, it began identifying “deficiencies” in the operation and zeroed in on parking.
A common complaint from people was they would pay $3 for up to two hours, but then end up going over, requiring them to run out to the machine to pay for more time in the midst of a medical appointment. So the company decided to extend the time to four hours for the same $3. But it also added the licence plate requirement, so people couldn’t pass on their stubs to others, Hindi said.
“We know that’s been a problem, but right now we’re looking at what we can do and we’re moving forward to make this better for everyone.”
She wouldn’t say whether the plate requirement will be eliminated, but she pointed out that there are numerous medical centre parking lots in the city where you pay to get through a gate, which eliminates any chance of passing your stub to someone else.
Another problem with the new system is many people don’t know their plate numbers by heart. On Tuesday, frustrated customers were walking back to their vehicles to read their plates, trying to remember the number when they returned to key it in.
“This is horrible, it’s stupid, all these instructions,” Larry Robert said while his wife Anne attempted to pay for their parking.
Like most people interviewed Thursday, they don’t like the fact they have to pay for parking to access health care in the first place. This latest hassle was an additional irritant.
“Health care is free by the government, but it’s not free to park,” Larry Robert said.
The new system is “absurd,” John Moffat said as he walked back to his car to check his licence plate. “It’s ridiculous, it’s very inconvenient, especially for someone who’s late for their appointment.”
The lot is enforced — by contract — by the City of Windsor, which means its officers can issue a parking ticket costing $25 to $28.
Requiring people to key in their plate numbers “is 100 per cent legal,” said the city’s supervisor of enforcement and compliance, Bill Kralovensky, who said he checked into the new system — the first one like it in the city — and only permitted his officers to start writing tickets once the kinks were worked out.
“It’s a private lot, they can do what they want. They could make you dance a jig as you put your money in if they wanted to,” he said, adding that if people get a ticket they have the right to fight it. Among the tickets issued was one for a parker who typed 111111 for his plate number.
Kralovensky said Windsor is behind the times when it comes to these types of systems and he expects there will be more like it to eliminate people passing on their stubs. The city, for example, is moving toward a mobile app that would replace pay-and-display systems.
“I know, everyone wants to be the nice guy,” Kralovensky said of the “pay it forward” practice.
“But it does cost a lot of money to run a parking lot. You’ve got maintenance, everything like that, so I guess they’re trying to get as much as they can out of it.”