I've been complaining for a while about the new parking meters going up in the small neighborhoods around Seattle. When you want to simply run in to grab a coffee or your dry cleaning, you have to grab change or a credit card, sometimes run half a block in the rain to a meter, wait for your ticket, and run back to your car to stick that annoying piece of paper in the window. The glue doesn't come off easily either.

Oh, I pine for the 2-hour limit spots that used to dot our streets. I even find myself choosing where I'll go based on where I can park.

All this hassling of customers is bad for small businesses, because why would I pay for parking (and the time) in addition to that coffee? I'm simply going to stop somewhere with a parking lot. It's especially bad for the the neighborhoods surrounding downtown, like Fremont and South Lake Union, where the businesses are typically smaller and can rarely afford to offer free parking. I called the city about it, but they didn't agree (of course). And fancy, new meters keep going up all the time.

Seattle isn't the only one with the problem. In an article from MSNBC, Bob Sullivan in his Red Tape Chronicles column talks about the ticket abuses happening in other major cities.