USA TODAY International Edition
Parking meters go high-tech
Payment apps, cameras that keep tabs on your car now do the counting for you
It’s easier to pay and avoid tickets when you get a countdown on your phone with an audible alert.”
Kristopher Carter, co-chair of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics in Boston
The last coin-operated meter was yanked out of the Portland, Ore., downtown area in 2016 and now resides in a local historical museum. Today, visitors to the downtown area’s 1,900 parking spots are welcomed by the Portland “Parking Kitty,” a high-tech meter that connects to a smartphone app. The app purrs when you pay and “meows” 15 minutes before your time expires to remind you to get back to the car or to request and pay for additional time.
High-tech parking isn’t unique to Portland, and it’s probably coming to a meter near you. Coin meters have given over to digital meters in eight of the top 10 U.S. cities, with various levels of sophistication. Meters that began with pay-by-phone have expanded to a current mix of pay via credit card and/or apps.
The next phase of the technology, which uses cameras to automatically track your parking via license plates and charge your account, has now started to roll out in some cities. It’s already raised some concerns over privacy.
The American Civil Liberties Union, on its website, notes that license plate readers are used for way more than making parking easier. They’re also tracking our every move.
The readers “have the potential to create permanent records
of virtually everywhere any of us has driven, radically transforming the consequences of leaving home to pursue private life, and opening up many opportunities for abuse.”
For cities, the incentive is big: higher revenues and fewer human resources devoted to checking meters. And the apps (ParkMe, SpotHero) also give drivers additional perks, such as tools to find open spaces or remind you (Parker) where you parked.
“Ten years ago the parking industry didn’t have all these options. We’re trying to evolve as quickly as possible,” says Malisa McCreedy, division manager of the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Launched in May, Parking Kitty represents 6% of Portland’s parking transactions.
As consumers’ financial options changed, more carrying plastic than coins, the industry gave pay-by-phone a try. But it’s a complicated process that requires writing down a code advertised by the meter, calling an assigned phone number and typing in the digits and your credit-card number. As such, usage for the pay-byphone offering is in the “single digits” in Boston, says Kristopher Carter, co-chair of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics in Boston.
Apps linked to credit cards have been far more popular, representing 75% of Boston payments.
The ParkBoston app, just 2 years old, tallied 3 million transactions last year for Boston’s 8,000 spaces. Parking revenue is up, and the issuing of tickets is down, Carter adds.
“It’s easier to pay and avoid tickets when you get a countdown on your phone with an audible alert,” Carter says.
With apps such as ParkBoston, a smartphone owner downloads the app, registers and stores credit-card information. When you park, you type in the code and confirm the license plate, which identifies your car. The average fee to use the apps to pay is 35 cents on top of the parking transaction.
Two companies dominate the municipal parking-by-app at meters: Charlotte-based Passport, which does the Portland app, along with apps for Boston, Chicago, London and other large cities, and Atlanta-based Parkmobile, whose app works with meters in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas and San Jose.
Parkmobile is launching later this year in San Antonio and Phoenix, and Passport is bringing its app to the Los Angeles Metro parking lots, where commuters park before landing a morning train in to work.
Like the recent parking app introduced at tony L.A. shopping mall the Westfield Century City, once you download the app, you don’t even have to type in a code. Cameras recognize the license plate of the car and bill you accordingly.
Westfield says the technology will be coming to its other malls in 2018.
“License plates are where the industry is headed,” says Bob Youakim, the CEO of Passport.
The old way involved a parking staffer driving up and down the street, looking at meters to see if you’ve paid in full or not. The coming way: just let the camera do the work.
“Cities can scan 100 license plates a minute, vs. manually looking to see if your space is paid for or not,” Youakim says.
Many analysts don’t believe we’ll still have smartphones 10 years or more from now. We’ll be so far into the future, many of us could be sitting back and have the robot drive us to work in selfdriving cars, they say.