"Smart" Parking Meters Considered Dumb

theodp writes "The jury's still out on whether Chicago taxpayers were taken to the cleaners by a rushed 75-year lease of the city's metered parking to a Morgan Stanley consortium. But most would probably agree that the new shared Pay Boxes that replaced the city's old parking meters don't exactly live up to their 'Smart' billing. Here's what the redesigned 'user-friendly' parking solution looks like: 1. Park your car. 2. Walk up to 1/2 block to a Pay Box. 3. Wait in line to use it. 4. Use coins or credit cards to purchase parking time — up to $84 for 24-hours (add $50 if you run out of time). 5. Wait for a paper receipt to be printed. 6. Walk up to 1/2 block back to your car. 7. Place the receipt on your dashboard. 8. Head off to your destination, perhaps passing the Pay Box a second time. So before other cities suffer the same fate as Chicago, Portland, and others, is there a 'smarter' way? Some suggest the ParkMagic In-Car Meter, but no new orders are being taken in Chicago. Any other ideas?"

Comments

already

[dukeofurl01]

Yay, first post!

They have those things in Sacramento California also, they suck! I hate them! They're the worst!
I heard in some cities though that they place sensors under the parking spots that reset the meter whenever somebody removes their car, as another way of making sure nobody gets any free time.

Re:already

[veganboyjosh]

If I think about it, and am close enough to the pay kiosk, and there's a decent amount of time left on my ticket, I'll just insert the ticket back into the machine where it prints it out, so the next person will hopefully see it before the swipe their card/insert their coins.

Re:already

[chaboud]

Since our meters are zone-based, (I'm in Chicago, being screwed by an unbelievably corrupt government), you can't really drive off with the tag and expect to be able to use it elsewhere. This means that the city has a series of rate zones that determine what the hourly rate is. Besides, you'd be paying the city^H^H^H^H^H LAZ parking for the time that you're driving. My new approach is to walk back to the ticket-dispensing machine and use the motorcycle stickers (or the sticky back of some tickets) to leave it on the machine so it can be used by someone else. Unfortunately, this only works if they are only going to be there a short enough time to not need any more than your original ticket.

That said, my wife and I were talking about how much we prefer these machines to what we had before, which was six dollars of quarters for an hour of parking. We each had quart-sized plastic bags in our cars that we regularly filled with quarters, and the meters were constantly failing from being too full. In order to fight a ticket later, you needed to call in and put a complaint on record. That was a major headache.

Regular meters were fine until our city screwed us out of parking revenue for 75 years in a no-bid festival of abject corruption. Why Chicagoans haven't burned City Hall to the ground is beyond me.

Forged Tickets?

[Frosty Piss]

If one were to forge the ticket (which can not be examined closely while under the dash glass...), I wonder how often the meter readers would actually check the machine data or ticket number/serial?

Old Style Meters

[Lord Byron II]

The old meters worked just fine!!

Also, the new meters could have worked, but the out-sourcing to a private company destroyed any hope of that.

An example of their ineptitude: they forgot to put batteries in some of the meters, making it impossible to get the magic slip of paper, and then ticketed people for it.

Park Plus

[jpmorgan]

Here in Calgary there's a similar system called Park Plus. If you park downtown you have to find one of the park plus machines (they're not very hard to find, they're all over the place), and punch in your license plate # and a 4 digit code indicating where you're parked (those are on signs all over the place too). There's no receipt or parking pass though. The system is enforced by a set of trucks covered in cameras and antennas. I presume they automatically scan the license plate of every parked car and check against the central system whether you've paid or not. What's pretty cool about it is you can also setup a debit account with the system, and then pay through your cell phone- call the system once when you park to 'check in' and again when you leave to 'check out' and it deducts the payment from your account.

what a travesty /sarcasm

[johncandale]

Please. How is this any different then metered parking with a meter at every space except you have to walk /up to/ half a block. Oh noes! Note most of the time you'll be walking much less then half a block statistically. Plus these take credit cards and cash. No more worries about carring around useless change in your car for the meter. It would be too expesinve and silly to place a machine that takes credit cards and cash at every space, not to mention expensive to maintain and empty.

Everyone says they want cities to stop over spending on infrastructure and to have realistic services but every time they inconvenience you just a little bit it's back to "spend spend spend! I can't walk half a block!"

scratch-off cards

[redfood]

In a number of cities in Israel you purchase scratch-off cards in connivence-stores. When you want to park you scratch the date/time off the card (to "activate" it) and hang it in your window. I think its pretty brilliant. No physical infrastructure to maintain. To money/coins to collect. If the city wants to change the price of parking - they just change it. No machines to update.

Re:The System

[strength_of_10_men]

My city started installing this system and I thought it was inefficient but could be more convenient in some circumstances.

However, I talked to one of the parking enforcement people and it was eye opening. They now know exactly when a meter expires via a wireless link from the smart meter to a handheld device. No need to walk past every meter now. They can just get a reading of which spot is expired and if a car is in that spot.

It's just a giant money grab by the city under the guise of "smart" technology. It's smart alright - smart for the city.

Worse than that

[GeorgeH]

In Ann Arbor, the "smart" meters are susceptible to an exploit where if you add 5 cents of time to a meter, you remove all the existing time on that meter. For $1, a prankster can reset 20 parking spots and watch everyone get parking tickets. More info at this screenshot of a now-deleted comment on AnnArbor.com.

Re:There must be a better way

[Kalriath]

Here in Auckland, NZ, we just fire a text message to the parking meter's 4 digit shortcode. $2 comes off the mobile balance, and parking paid. Granted, there needs to be a nearby parking meter so you can get the validation code from it, but they're not more than maybe 20 metres away in most places. You can still pay by cash or Visa if you want to.

Re:There must be a better way

[dotgain]

Heh, I used to do that (in Auckland, NZ) from my work mobile, whenever I visited the head office about once a month. Tremendously convenient, well worth the extra 50 cents. One day it didn't work, instead a TXT came back saying my mobile couldn't do that anymore.

Turns out the Accounts department didn't like me doing that, and cancelled it without telling me. Apparently they'd rather I fill out an expense claim, get it signed by my manager, than fax it to accounts, at which stage they'd credit it to me again. For two dollars, every month (man of principle, etc.)

Corporate Accountants FTW - without them two dollars each month would be incorrectly classified as Telecomms rather than Travel - thank god they caught me out at my terrible little game.

Re:It's supposed to be difficult

[Jared555]

Fact is that the SOIL is public. That means that the SOIL is YOURS. Now would you like to be charged for living into your house? I doubt it.

Ever heard of property/real estate tax?