"Smart" Parking Meters Considered Dumb 863
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?"
already (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Forged Tickets? (Score:5, Interesting)
Old Style Meters (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
they are meant to to increase revenue (Score:3, Interesting)
old style meters if you park at one with time left over then the city "lost" money
new meters when you park unless someone gives you a ticket with time on it you have to pay even if the person before you didn't use all their time
e-zpass or e-zpark? (Score:2, Interesting)
Instead call it e-zpark or whatever. After being in your parking spot for X amount of time, charge your account for it. That way, you don't pay for time not used and you also don't have to waste time feeding the meter. You also won't be dupped into feeding the meter when they're free (such as on the weekend or after hours). For spots with a time limit, they could increase the rate after you've reached the time limit and/or send you a txt message telling you that you're time was about up.
Park Plus (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Get rid of... Parking Meters! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Decent system (Score:0, Interesting)
what a travesty /sarcasm (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:already (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The System (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [flickr.com] on AnnArbor.com.
Numbers spots inply painted lines (Score:4, Interesting)
And painted lines are either too small to parallel park your stupid Hummer, or a massive waste of space to park a smart car. Without lines, you can squeeze more cars into a block because people get right on each others ass--which is the way it should be. Everybody should get on each others ass, that way there is no wasted space.
Put in lines, and you waste an assload of space so some idiot can parallel park his boat-car.
No thanks. I'll keep my city streets free of painted lines and if they become painted, I (and most of my neighbors) will take the suggestion, but if there is enough space, we'll happily park our cars between the lines. After all, when it takes 15 or 25 minutes to find a space, if my car can fit, I'm parking it--fuck your lines.
PS: nothing makes me smile more than grown men who need their wife/girlfriend/friend to get out and guide them into *giant* spot. Buddy, I can park your car so there is only two inches between the guy in front and the guy behind and do it without tapping either bumper. It takes a while, but as I said, when you look for 25 minutes to find a spot--if I even think I can fit, fuck it, I'm going in!
Re:Number each spot (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm from Singapore. Here, every vehicle has an electronic device with a stored value card in it. On the way in, a wireless scanner logs you in, and on the way out the same system clocks you out, calculates the total time you spent in the lot (minus 5 minutes goodwill to allow you to find a spot) and deducts the appropriate amount from the card.
Both the entrance and exit are gated and the gates won't open if 1) all the lots are full or 2) you don't have enough value in your card to pay. Top up stations exist within walking distance so you never end up being unable to leave.
Re:There is a better way... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There must be a better way (Score:5, Interesting)
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:already (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There must be a better way (Score:3, Interesting)
And yet they too are mysteriously empty!
I'm with GP I never have quarters. I never have cash. I have never have quarters. I never have nickels. As far as I'm concerned magnetic strips are the only way to pay with for goods and services.
It's supposed to be difficult (Score:3, Interesting)
and that is not a bad thing. Study after study has shown that by charging for parking you build in some the economic externalities into the cost of driving. think of it as a way to discourage congestion. it gives more people the opportunity to park downtown if people are discouraged from lingering. Sure you could charge more for gas or have fees to enter the city, or any number of things but this is easy to implement and has fewer side effects (as raising gas would). By making it difficult you pay with nuisance and wasted time rather than cash, which is a less regressive form of taxation.
Re:Robots can fix anything. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There must be a better way (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
People too poor for a ramp (read: college students me) could instead trade time for a spot. Sure, you might have to circle for 10 minutes and park further away but that meter might only cost you 25c for 15 minutes.
I understand that more expensive parking puts the cost of driving more clearly on the driver but I don't like it. Ramps are already quite expensive and meters are hard to find so I like being able to spend my time instead of money (it still puts the cost on me...just in a way that I can handle). Also, a lot of the heaviest drivers don't use meters--they have monthly parking passes for work at a steep discount compared to hourly parking.
I get that increasing the perceived cost driving will cut down on unessential car use but sometimes it is simply necessary. Necessary car use is what things like uhaul and zipcar (and igo car--the chicago only zipcar equivalent that I use sometimes) are for...whenever I am parking somewhere, you can rest assured that I *need* to be doing that driving because I am already paying out the ass for mileage on a uhaul or on the clock for my igo car...
Re:already (Score:3, Interesting)
If chicago hadn't sold off their parking meters, maybe the future could have been meters that are also payable by Chicago Cards (rfid based transit cards that maintain a balance and track active transfers and stuff). I can already get a card (via http://www.igocars.org/ [igocars.org]) that lets me both rent a car by the hour and take the bus/train--why not make the same card able to pay for parking and set it up in such a way that I can "swipe out" remaining time and use it on another meter.
Sure, it is an almost guaranteed loss in revenue since a lot of abandoned time goes unused but I would even settle for a system that worked like bus transfers...if you swipe out a meter with $.50 credit left, you can use that credit on any meter in the city within a limited transfer period. Stretch it out to 24 hours so people running lots of errands get a break (good job combining car trips instead of making wasteful individual trips) but it still expires at some point so the city can keep the unused time.
Montréal parking meters (Score:3, Interesting)
Parking meters in Montréal are being replaced by smart Linux wireless solar-powered boxes [linuxfordevices.com]. The whole of downtown is done by now.
To use them [statdemtl.qc.ca], you just need to note the parking spot number, then walk to the nearby pay station in which you key-in the spot number and pay (they take credit and bank cards) for the duration you plan to park. You get a receipt which you don’t need to put on your dashboard; the parking spot and duration is sent to a central server.
Parking enforcement agents (the legendary “ green onions [myvirtualpaper.com]”) then are told by a hand-held computer which spots haven't been paid or are expired when they do their rounds. The computer only needs to be told the license plate number, and it prints the whole parking ticket automagically without subjecting the green onion to the risk of writer’s cramp (unfortunately, he still has to get out of his car and put it under the wipers).
Re:already (Score:2, Interesting)
If they have sensors, they should make my clock stop when I leave, and let me use up the rest of my time the next time I park at a comparable place in the city. If I leave 10 minutes later, only 10 minutes should be subtracted.
They have a central system now, and it's computerized, they can track these things down to millisecond resolution, no excuses!
Re:This is honestly a problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can somebody please give a solid answer as to why these meters are a problem?
I haven't looked into the details of the Chicago or Portland meters, but... there's more than one company that makes these meters, and maybe the Portland ones are good and the Chicago ones suck? Or maybe the Chicago ones are too sparse and the Portland ones are placed frequently enough?
Re:There must be a better way (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually for at least three or more years in Belgrade, Serbia payment with mobile phones is already in use in some areas.
http://www.parking-servis.co.rs/en/parking_facilities/zones/zones_with_time_limit/payment_of_parking [parking-servis.co.rs]
At the beginning of every block, there's a signpost with a code of the area and a phone number. You use the code of the area and your registration and send an SMS. This pays for an hour of parking. about 15 minutes before your time expires you receive a reminder SMS that also gives you an option to extend for another hour.
Simple, effective and convenient. If you're parking in the same area often, you only need to check the area code for the first time. After that you can have it stored in your phone and you're good to go.
The "meter" guys then simply lookup your car plate and see if you paid or not.
For those who don't have a mobile phone there are also alternative means of paying, but this one serves as the main one.
In Amsterdam... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mobile parking anyone!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's supposed to be difficult (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Park Plus (Score:1, Interesting)
The Calgary system using cellphones was great when I lived there. The biggest advantage is that you don't have to guess at how long you need to park for. If you run out of time, it will call you 10 minutes before it expires and automatically extends the time for you (if you have enough cash in your account with them). I had set it up on a pay-as-you-go basis with a credit card, I don't know if that has changed. You also call in when you want to start and then call back again to stop the timer; each time you only have to press "1", so you don't even have to listen to the message.
I found the system really convenient when I lived there, and my initial $50 lasted me more than a year. Finding a place to park though, that's the real challenge.
Re:already (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Sounds like a standard system to me (Score:1, Interesting)
This kind of parking zone is still around, yes.
Re:It's supposed to be difficult (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>And even if you do, I still get more than that alone. I drive a scooter, and get an easy 100MPG with a passenger.
Which is completely and totally worthless for taking me to my distant job, or for carrying a month's worth of groceries, or protecting my fragile body from potential harm. At least my 2001 Honda Insight can do all three tasks AND get the 80 MPG at the same time.
I'm going to speak bluntly -
've spoken to folks like yourself before - those who are anticar and antisprawl. What you Green people think Americans should do is all squeeze into tiny cities like Baltimore or D.C., with just one maybe two rooms per family. I'm sorry but I don't envision living like sardines as a future I want to aspire to. I'm claustrophobic. I'd rather be dead than be forced to live inside the city limits. "Concrete hell" is what I call that.
And it's completely unnecessary. Volkswagen's will be selling a car in 2010 that gets 250mpg. They have another prototype, not for sale, that holds 3 people and gets 120mpg. And of course regular 4/5-seaters exist in Europe that can get 50-60mpg, like the Ford Focus CDI, or the VW Polo. THESE are practical solutions that I can live with.
Your solution (everyone squeezes into cities like sardines) is not practical.