What’s happening to Hamilton’s defunct parking meters?
The fate of the city’s now defunct old parking meters is yet to be decided.
Around 800 of them have been removed from the central city as the coin operated machines are phased out in favour of smart parking meters.
Options for their future include being raided for spare parts, listed on TradeMe, or sold as scrap metal.
The old meters are lined up in rows in storage until the council decides how to dispose of them in the most sustainable and cost effective way, says Hamilton City Council transport unit director, Gordon Naidoo.
“We’re working with Christchurch, Hastings, and Queenstown Councils to understand what they did with the old meters when they implemented electronic meters in their cities.”
Some options being considered - and the answer may be a combination - are selling the meters to the Lincoln St Resource Recovery Centre, and remaining meters to scrap metal and selling parts to other councils that still use them.
The council is also looking at selling refurbished components as spare parts or, where viable, the supplier refurbishes the meters to on-sell and distributes parts for scrap metal, recycling, and disposal.
Parking activity manager John Purcell says Hamilton is one of the last cities to get rid of the coin-operated meters and they’re about “halfway through”.
“We were stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he said.
“If we left the heads there people... might still be putting money in the meters. Take the heads off and then people say, but there's a pole still in the ground. “So we’re fast tracking the removal.” Getting the meter heads off relies on releasing an internal clamping mechanism, whereas removing poles requires opening the ground around them, cutting them out, and fixing the footpath again.
There’s no market for the old meters any more, Purcell says, but they might try listing some on TradeMe to see if there’s anyone interested in using them for something creative, and have donated one to the Waikato Museum.
The council is also installing 14 pay by cash machines for those who prefer it, with 12 already in place.
The new digital meters operate by touch-screen and payment is made with payWave or the PayMyPark app.