Pour one out for the single-space parking meter, its days are numbered. Hot on the heels of the recent meter rate hike today the city will remove its last decommissioned single-space parking meter in Manhattan. Of course, this doesn't mean you should expect free parking around town, just more Multispace Muni-Meters!
The last working meter is getting uprooted (some brainless meters will remain on the street, eventually to be turned into bike racks) 60 years to the day from when the first was installed. That meter made its to debut "at a formal ceremony in Harlem that attracted the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. 'It’s just another way of getting money out of people,' the middleweight champion remarked at the time."
So, say goodbye to the age-old hunt for that glorious broken meter and the sledgehammer-wielding thieves who used to break them for their quarters—in Manhattan at least. 43,000 single-space meters will remain in place in the outer boroughs while the city spends $34 million to install more solar-powered, Wi-Fi enabled MuniMeters (at a cost of $4,392 a pop).
