Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
Perfectly innocent question: Why didn't you just park in the parkade adjacent to this lot? I believe the first 20 minutes only costs $1.50 or so.
Just curious as I notice that Haligonians seem to be allergic to paying for parking. This is good for me as I usually just head straight for the parkade whenever I go downtown rather than spend half an hour circling the streets to find a spot only to see that it is a loading zone or some such thing. IMHO, a few bucks is a nominal cost for the convenience of knowing you have a spot available, plus it helps to get congestion of parked cars off the streets, and it supports the costs involved with maintaining such a facility.
However, I do tend to avoid the lots where you pay before you park, as you have to to guess how long you will leave your car there and then check your watch all afternoon to make sure you will get back to your car on time. A win-win moneygrab for the owners as you either pay for too much time or give them extra money for the resultant parking ticket. Oh well - their lot, their rules...
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I avoid parking garages here in HRM due to height-clearance and turning-clearence reasons more than financial reasons. While Metro Park's height is 6'10', which is high enough for my current truck, how do I know I won't get my truck snagged further inside of the structure? I actually had this happen at the Airport garage with a previous pickup truck that I had (that was taller than my current one) that easily fit under the height-clearance bars, and yet, got held up at the internal electronic gates due to the configuration of their height sensors. After that, I avoided parking garages like the plague.
I have also seen some garages that have electronic gates, pipes, signage or structural beams that slightly impinge into the nominal height clearance that's denoted on their entry bars (i.e. internal electronic gates at Halifax Intl Airport's garage and pipes and beams at both Halifax Shopping Center's and Park Lane Mall's garages). A 15cm/6" safety factor should be looked at for these instances to mitigate internal snags. It's one thing not to be able to get under the height clearance bar, but it's a whole new ball game when you make it under the height clearance bar and still get snagged somewhere inside.
I often also find that it's faster to park up to a block over and walk a bit futher around the block (even over on Hollis Street, which actually had an open spot) than go into a multi-storey garage, wind my way up the spiral laneway to a the nearest spot and then clamour on down the staircase after parking.
Also, I believed that only being on that empty gravel lot (United Gulf Lot 3A) for only 10 minutes well outside of normal peak parking hours would not be an issue, while it actually turned out I was majorly wrong, where I found out quite harshly that "24/7" really means "24/7", all the way to not even being allowed to leave a no-parking-pass vehicle unattended for more than an instant. Now I know that the rule is in fact
"Leave a vehicle without a valid parking pass unattended for even just an instant, regardless of time of day, get booted!" Hey, if United Gulf wants to bankrupt themselves by over-enforcing that parking lot in this manner outside of its normal parking-pass user base hours,
Let Them. I'll have no sympathy for United Gulf in that instance.
If this lot was short-stay "pay & display", at least outside of the hours that its normal parking-pass users are normally there, I would have certainly paid for the parking instead of fighting for parking on the street, risking getting snagged in a parking garage or risking getting ticketed, booted or towed.
Regards,
Richard Kannegiesser