Parking meters were never popular, but for today’s bricks-and-mortar retailers they have become downright terrifying.
Once-upon-a-time, councils could get away with using these as revenue raisers.
Not any more.
Online shopping gives people an easy alternative to visiting bricks-and-mortar shops.
If people are going to keep visiting shops, it has to be a pleasant experience. If not, they’ll stay away.
Hobart City Council is helping people stay away … read this and weep.
And before you say fewer vehicles taken on shopping trips is good because it creates less traffic and less CO2, consider that online purchases must be delivered, often right across the world from the land of the online bargain, China.
The material world makes greenhouse gas. There is no escape.
And here’s an external story about the crash in retail outlets in the USA, a trend quite possibly coming to a store near you in the near future.
Here’s a story about the death of shopping malls.
Retail, that great employer of young Australians, needs all the help it can get.