Another blogger has exactly expressed my opinion of “smart” parking meters – you know, the ones that erase meter credit once a car has moved out of the spot, robbing the next guy of 7 minutes of free parking. The headline reads: Smart Parking Meters will End Free Rides and Fun.
This is a fair and sound parking policy, but it’s not friendly. People absolutely love finding free minutes on parking meters. And if we are talking about “friendly” policy, a few minutes for free is as friendly as it gets. But I know we are mostly talking about money.
How about a compromise? Say somebody drives away and leaves 20 minutes on their meter. Cut that 20 minutes to 5 – make more money for the city and let the next parker feel like she found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. She won’t know there was initially 20 minutes left, and she will thoroughly enjoy her 5 minutes. And the newspaper won’t have to write an article about smart meters ruining everyone’s lives.
3 Responses
Who says it doesn’t give the next person 5 minutes? This type of thing might not be displayed 😉
Not everyone in the Parking tech industry is evil. But even fairies can’t display their work…….otherwise its loses its magic.
Not to mention those parking tech gremlins who ruin things like OCR, lost messages, bad data anyway……..those are really fairies in disguise also.
Sometimes you shouldn’t ask to have cake and eat it too. 100% is 100% – Do you really want 100% accurate parking technology? Even if it means that parking credit is wiped when someone leaves?
I would rather 90% success rate, with a 10% fudge margin (lets call it “5 minutes”) that no one knows about………
Perhaps the same technology that removes the time could put a few free minutes on the meter when the car first pulls in, it’s all just programming.
Exactly – cities can make people feel good but still make more money.