Seattle Parking: Not transferable

Hey, Seattle residents and visitors, dig deeper at the parking meter. It's good for ... Visa, the credit and debit card giant.

That seems to be the gist of the city's answer to a Seattle P-I reader's question about why those modern parking "pay stations" require minimum transactions of 25 cents, even if a customer is paying with coins and only wants to park several minutes. In Monday's "Getting There" column, the P-I's Larry Lange quoted a city official as saying Visa Cards had demanded Seattle set identical minimum charges for card and coin transactions. That led to talks and the 25-cent minimum.

We like the pay stations' convenience and the option of paying with a card. We didn't even mind the old $1.50 minimum on cards when you could pay as little as a nickel with coins. We don't at all like Visa dictating to cities. If Visa or other companies are going to play hardball in dealings with municipalities, officials ought not to get into any relationship they can't abandon.

While the stations have pluses, there are other irritations besides the minimum. Like tickets for people who pay but paste the sticker in the wrong spot. And then there's the no-transfer rule, where you can take the sticker with you to another spot but are forbidden from engaging in a random act of kindness by giving the remaining time to the next person.

Recently, though, some good soul attached a sticker with remaining time to a pay station. Perhaps in Seattle there are still ways to tweak City Hall even if City Hall can't fight Visa effectively.