Get ready to actually pay the parking meter in Providence
PROVIDENCE — Odds are, when you pull up to a parking meter in Providence, it is broken.
That’s because, according to the city’s best guess, roughly 60 percent of the existing meters don’t actually work.
That leaves drivers with two options: pay using a smartphone app called Passport, or hope that a parking enforcement officer won’t issue a ticket to a car that’s parked at an out-of-order meter. For the most part in recent years, option two has worked out well.
That’s all about to change. On April 18,, the city began a sweeping replacement of all meters in the city, including both single-space and multi-space. The new ones will accept coins, credit cards, contactless payments like Apple Pay, text-to-pay, and payment apps including the current Passport app.
Melanie Jewett, the city’s curbside administrator, said the existing meters are roughly 17 years old, and have outlived their useful life.
“When they were installed, they were state of the art,” Jewett told the Globe. “They were the first generation of parking meters to take credit cards.”
But the meters stopped being able to take credit cards in 2022, when 3G technology was shut down nationwide. Since then, even the working meters only have been able to take coins. A sign beneath the credit card slot on each parking meter warns “meters do not accept credit cards.”
The new meters were purchased from San Diegobased IPS Group for $1.2 million. The funds come from the city’s final appropriation of COVID relief funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.
The single-space meters look almost the same as the existing meters. Department of Public Works employees started yanking the old meters from their bases, preparing to install the new ones on the existing poles.
The new multi-space meters that cover a whole street have a sleeker, more modern look, like a cross between a robot and an ATM that is about to ask you for $2.50.
The price to park will remain the same at $1.25 an hour, Jewett said, although credit card users will be required to pay for the full two hours. The hours of operation will extend in some areas, with all meters active from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Sundays are free.
Jewett said the meters in some parts of the city such as Federal Hill already are charging until 9 p.m. now, while others currently end at 6 p.m.
The city employs 25 parking enforcement officers, according to spokesperson Josh Estrella. In 2023, 89,616 parking tickets were issued, at $25 per ticket.
There will be 1,000 single-space meters and 102 multispace meters, which should all be in place by mid-May, Jewett said. They will mostly be in the same locations as the current meters, with some slight shifting, she said. None of the existing meters are sticking around.
“If you pull up to a meter and it’s functional, it’s probably a new one,” Jewett noted.
Mayor Brett Smiley said the existing parking meter situation provides for a “hostile visitor experience,” not only because they are falling apart and lack payment options, but because the city uses multiple vendors, so not every meter operates the same way. The new parking meters will clear up the confusion.
“It will just be a better experience for everyone,” Smiley said.