Parking Authority adding 3 kiosks

Technology is better suited for parking needs

LANSDALE — Kiosks are now on order, and could be coming soon to three parking lots in and around downtown Lansdale.

Those kiosks will bring borough parking into the 21st century, which should benefifit both drivers and the borough itself, according to Lansdale Parking Authority Chairman Dan Dunigan.

“The idea is that they’ll be able to adjust parking based on demand, if you need them to they’ll be able to communicate wirelessly or wired, and they’ll be more than capable of handling the load we currently have,” Dunigan said.

Three kiosks costing roughly $10,000 each were ordered during the Authority’s June 11 meeting and will be installed within six to eight weeks in three parking lots downtown: in the West Main parking lot at Main Street and Susquehanna Avenue, in the Walnut Street lot at Main and Walnut streets and in the Susquehanna lot at Susquehanna and Vine Street that has recently been expanded during nearby streetscape work.

Their use was recommended in a parking study by consultants Nelson Nygaard Associates in 2011-12, which suggested, among other changes, the use of demand-sensitive pricing to charge more to park closer to Main Street, allowing a short time for free parking to encourage quick turnover and to invest in equipment including kiosks that can be upgraded to use future technology as traditional meter heads are phased out.

Installing parking kiosks instead of individual meters at each space “will be a good first step to install in just a few parking lots to test the brand, see what we like about it and see if it really does fit our needs before we try some sort of larger scale deployment,” Dunigan said.

Once they arrive in town, the kiosks will be installed by borough public works staff, cutting down on installation costs, he added, and the model chosen — the Digital Payment Technologies LUKE II Multi-Space Pay Station, for those interested — were bought via the state’s COSTARS bulk bidding system to ensure the lowest possible cost.

Signage in those lots may be added to direct those who park to pay at the kiosk, Dunigan said, and as they’re installed, the kiosks are capable of accepting payments from dedicated “smart cards,” along with “credit cards, bills, the whole shooting match,” he said.

Current parking rates and zones will likely stay the same once those kiosks are installed, and the two lots that border Main Street will be priced to charge the $1 per hour rate that’s applied throughout Lansdale’s downtown core zone, while the Susquehanna lot kiosk will be priced to charge 50 cents per hour in line with the secondary parking zone. Authority discussions have also brought up the possibility that putting kiosks in downtown lots would free up the meter heads currently used in those lots for installation elsewhere, such as parts of Main or Madison streets that are currently unmetered, and have said the kiosks would pay for themselves in roughly one year while freeing up 15 meter heads used in the West Main lot and 22 in the Walnut Street lot.

The kiosk purchase was vetted and recommended by a steering committee comprised of staff and several authority members, and that committee is also looking into recommendations on gateway signs to be installed at strategic points as visitors enter the borough, along with ways to streamline the complicated and at times convoluted connections between borough and authority.

“Right now the guys that fix the meters, collect the money and do that kind of stuff are borough employees, and we have a fund that’s part of the borough budget” that covers operational expenses and accepts meter revenue, Dunigan said.

The Parking Authority has its own capital fund from which long-term expenses like the kiosk purchase, along with recurring monthly expenses, are invoiced during the monthly authority meetings. A Parking Fund for operational expenses and revenues is included in the borough’s annual budget and shows that in 2013, the borough took in over $66,000 from parking meters and $11,000 from parking violation fines, offset by roughly $33,000 in salary and supply expenses and $50,000 in legal expenses, among smaller line items, according to the 2014 borough budget.

“At the end of last year, the Parking Authority wasn’t quite making money, but we’re now getting much closer, and I think (2014) actually will be the year we’re in the black. That’s the goal,” Dunigan said.

Why are the funds organized that way?

“It’s one of those ‘because we’re a little town, and that’s the way we grew up’ kind of things,” Dunigan said, and once the revenues start to exceed expenses “you start to work more like a traditional parking authority would be run, as opposed to the way it had been for a very long time.”

Borough Manager Timi Kirchner said this week the kiosk purchase and Parking Authority budget will likely be discussed at council’s Administration and Finance Committee meeting July 2.

The authority is also in communication with SEPTA and has agreed that the transit agency can direct commuters to park in the Susquehanna lot while boring work is underway in the SEPTA lots behind the Lansdale Train Station. While those spots are under construction through late June, parking in the Susquehanna Lot will be free — once the kiosk goes up that will change, but the public will have plenty of warning, Dunigan said.

The Lansdale Parking Authority’s next meeting will be held at 7 p.m. on June 9 at the borough’s Wissahickon Park Building, 765 E. Main St. Borough council meets at 7 p.m. on June 18 and at 9 p.m. on July 2 with council committee meetings starting at 7 p.m. on July 2; those meetings will be held at the North Penn School District’s Educational Services Center, 401 E. Hancock St. For more information or meeting agendas and materials, visit www.Lansdale.org or follow @LansdalePA on Twitter.