Pay-By-Cell Parking Meters Installed on Square
Decatur Metro | October 29, 2008The Decatur Minute announces the installation of pay-by-cell parking meters on N. McDonough and E. Court House Square and is asking for feedback from those that have used it.
To be honest, the process sounds kind of complicated. You gotta sign up online and then carry around a user number and password (The Decatur Minute has a step-by-step flyer, which I can’t link to) But I guess if you’ve left all your change in the dryer, or you need to recharge the meter and your miles away, it could come in handy.
There’s also a 25 cent service charge for each transaction, so those that use change are, in effect, rewarded. Shouldn’t there be incentive to try the new method as opposed to stick with the old?
UPDATE: Just to prove I’m not a recreational griper, I did a Google search of “Pay-by-Cell” parking meters. From what I’ve seen, areas of San Fran, Vancouver, Oklahoma City, Houston, Coral Gables and Boston have already adopted or tested the technology.
However, I can’t find much that talks about the success/failures of the system. Here’s an April ’08 article about San Francisco’s system saying that response has been “tepid” and a conversation on Portland Transport from the same month saying that their version of this system hasn’t caught on. Different articles talk about a city’s ability to now vary the rate for parking depending on the time of day and the obvious benefit of eventually doing away with meter maids if the system were universally accepted or adopted.
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I thought it was interesting that the company providing the service was never clear (on their website and in their demo) on exactly how you pay for your parking. Do the charges hit your phone bill?
The entire process seemed clunky– often a sign that the details have yet to be worked out. I kind of imagine a scary sneakernet going on in the background where some poor soul is figuring out how long it was between your “start” and “end” calls and calculating your meter charges from that.
Um, I’ll stick with quarters for now.
I haven’t used the ones in Decatur, but they have a similar (maybe the same) service for the Atlantic Station parking meters. The way it works there is when you sign up, you give them a credit card number. After that, whenever you call in to pay for parking, the charge goes to your credit card. It was pretty quick and easy the one time I used it.
I signed up last night and will try it today and post results later….
If I am not too drunk after walking out of the pub
There’s now an update to the original post with lots of links to articles about other cities installing these types of meters.
Thanks Left Wing! Hope you can find a spot!
I signed up on line yesterday. When you sign up, you create an account and add money to it with a credit card. I think the minimum was $20. I just parked in a metered space a few minutes ago to test it out. Because my cellphone was registered on my account, when I called the number on the parking meter it recognized me, asked me to punch in the parking meter number and added time to the meter. I didn’t have to give a user name or a password — quite easy. The only caution is that during the test period you aren’t given an option of how much time to buy. It will put 2 hours on the meter. If you are only planning to park for a short time, carry coins. The company tells us that they are working on an option that allows you to buy time in 30 minute increments.
Looks like I dont have to get buzzed! Thanks Lyn.
What if you stay parked in the space longer than two hours?
I thought there was 2 hour limit to keep people from using the meters to park in spaces all day or has that changed?
The company website says you must call the phone # again to end your parking session. Is that true or does it just give you 2 hours and you can be ticketed if you stay parked longer than two hours?
I tried staying longer than two hours to check and make sure we weren’t inadvertantly encouraging meter feeders. I called the number after my meter lapsed and entered the meter number again. I waited a few minutes and no time was added to the meter. For some reason I’m having trouble receiving text messages on my phone today. The service was clearly trying to send me messages but I couldn’t receive them so don’t know if it sent a message telling me I was over the time limit. These are the kinds of kinks we want to work out before we expand the service. That’s why we’re doing a limited test in the areas where we get the most use. We’ll keep feeding the questions to the company and they are working to smooth things out in the system.
I hope you caught the meter running out before Alma did ! LOL
Thought I clear up some of the misunderstanding from the above posts.
The pay by cell process really is quite simple. No one stumbles on the web page by accident. The initial two days of the launch the flyers and stickers weren’t ready, so instead, pay by cell representatives were onhand in the parking lot all day and handed out cards to parkers with a step-by step guide to starting the free parking session. They then explained how to register after the free parking session, that it would require a credit card, etc.. In addition, the city PALS also were trained in assisting prospective customers. When making the pay by cell phone call customers get verbal prompts telling them exactly what to do, supplemented by text messages which advise them that to continue using the service you have to register online with your credit card etc.. If you still have any questions you have the option to connect to a live operator. By the time you get to the web page, you already know how to use the system. And, if not, you go the How to use it page, or the Frequently asked questions page.
And, by the way, the pay by cell company in question has the longest experience in cell phone parking in the world with millions of parking sessions under its belt and the few details that still need to be worked our are those related to the marriage of two technologies, the first in the world to put time on a single space meter with a simple phone call.
Hope that clears up a few of your concerns.
In this particular instance it is being offered as a service to the city n
sorry, pressed send too soon.
In this particular instance it is being offered as a service to the city through the contract with the meter company, and not a stand alone service.
Regarding calling again to end the session. This is not the case with the installation in Decatur since it is offered as a integrated solution with the meter company. If this were a stand alone project with cell phone parking by itself, then it might be required if the option to select time in advance is not offered.
KAT, <>
Can you please tell me how much the city pays through the contract?
Thank you kindly
Pretty cool. I use my cell phone for everything else, so why not parking.