Time not up yet as parking meters hit 50

IT IS the 50th birthday no-one is likely to celebrate: parking meters had notched up five decades of use in the UK.

However, a small but dedicated fan base emerged yesterday as experts called for the original parking meters to be viewed as a British design icon.

The golden anniversary was marked with a display of old parking meters in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, where the first machines were installed in London in 1958.

They were originally invented by local newspaper editor Carlton Magee for use in Oklahoma, America, in 1935. But the British version was deemed to be too ugly by the Council of Industrial Design, which commissioned Kenneth Grange to give it a new casing.

Professor Mike Press, head of the school of design at Dundee University's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, said Mr Grange should not be seen as a hate figure for designing the parking meter.

He said: "Kenneth Grange is one of the greatest designers in the UK and his parking meter is in the top ten of design icons – it's better than the iPod.

"It is a beautiful, sculptural form that has taken pride of place on our streets, yet we are so familiar with it, it has become invisible – the hallmark of all the best public designs.

"It is also responsible for inspiring one of the best songs by the Beatles – Lovely Rita, meter maid became part of our culture in the 1960s."

Speaking to the The Scotsman yesterday Mr Grange, 78, also famous for designing Kenwood food-mixers, Kodak cameras and London black cabs, criticised the more modern design of today's meter.

He said: "My design was a warm shape that seemed like a normal part of the pavement, not like the fierce, aggressive shape you see today.

"All you get is these very anonymous boxes covered in terrible anti-vandalism coatings, which I find more offensive."

He also criticised the "ugly" 'Stelio' solar-powered machines installed across Edinburgh by parking meter manufacturer, Parkeon Ltd.

Professor Stuart MacDonald, head of Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, was also critical of the modern design. He said: "They will never be loved like people take red pillar boxes to their hearts.

"But the first (parking meter] we had in this country was designed with a great eye for the environment around it.

"Subsequent designs became boxy, horrible and obtrusive. We are now coming back to the notion that designs in the public realm have to be sympathetic to the landscape, not desecrate it."

But Bruce Young, spokesman for the Association of British Drivers, said:

"There is a lot of waffle and self-justification attached to parking meters. Unfortunately they have developed into an industry in their own right and are a major contributor to local authorities' revenues.

"In Edinburgh that is taken to excess, with George Street having the highest-priced street parking of anywhere in Britain outside London."

Bob Barnes, director of Parkeon Ltd, defended the much-derided meter.

He said: "Parking meters are not generally loved.They suffer abuse.

"Motorists don't like them because they feel forced to use them, but hopefully soon attitudes will change as new technologies are harnessed to make life easier."

TIMELINE

1935: Parking meters first invented by US newspaper editor Carlton Magee for use in Oklahoma.

1960: New York City hired its first crew of "meter maids", so-called because all were women.

1967: The film Cool Hand Luke is released, starring Paul Newman as a man sent to a prison for cutting the heads off parking meters.

1968: the first pay-and-display meters were installed in the UK to control residents' parking in London.

2001: Nottingham City Council installs Britain's first solar-powered parking meters, but the weather was too gloomy for them to work.

2006: New York City retired its last mechanical parking meter, located in Coney Island. The 62,000 new single-space parking meters are digital and harder to break into.

2007: Westminster City Council announced it is going to scrap parking meters in central London in favour of a cashless pay-by-phone system in an attempt to eliminate theft and fraud.