For those folks that like to park but don’t pay their parking fines, there is a new device to replace “The Boot” that is attached to your car tire and means you can’t move your car. “The Boot” was effective in that it immobilized the car. The challenge for parking enforcement staff was installing “The Boot”. You can imagine that kneeling on a street and being bent over the tire of a car installing “The Boot” might be upsetting to the offending motorist or bystanders.
Enter the Barnacle. As reported in City Lab, “The concept behind the apparatus, made by New York’s Ideas That Stick, is simple: It’s a rugged plastic rectangle that attaches with incredible force to the windshield, and can’t be removed until motorists pay a fine over the phone and get a release code. Adding insult to injury, drivers are then expected to return it to a drop-off location within 24 hours”.
“If they try to move the car or pry the “Barnacle” off, a la Homer Simpson jackhammering a boot, an alarm goes off. And if they huck it into a dumpster after paying the penalty, a GPS tracker will keep it on parking enforcement’s radar.”
So far two cities, Fort Lauderdale Florida and Allentown Pennsylvania are trialing this device. No word yet on the effectiveness of the Barnacle, but it is quick and relatively effortless to install and several can be carried around in one vehicle. Somehow it just seems easier to use active transportation and transit. And pay your parking fines.
Depending on where these are used they might make sense. Really though we need to think about the purpose of parking restrictions. The goal usually is to prevent vehicles from staying too long in one space (thereby denying others the ability to park there), parking in an area designated for other purposes (again denying others the ability to use the space), to prevent safety problems (like parking too close to a crosswalk and impeding visibility) or from taking away road capacity at peak times.
None of those scenarios are aided by a device that prevents the vehicle from being moved. In fact preventing the vehicle from being moved as “punishment” for not moving your vehicle seems totally counterproductive to me. Towing the vehicle and impounding it (the approach used by the CoV) certainly works to achieve the stated goals of parking restrictions however.
Of course if the real goal is simply to collect revenue with no concern about the points mentioned above then sure, this is a great idea!