This morning’s AJC reports on Atlantic Station’s new pay-by-phone parking meter called “Parkmobile” and predicts that such an effort might “herald wider adoption in Atlanta”, though does elaborate on why.

Decatur uses a rival company with a more excited name, MobileNOW!.  In the article Assistant City Manager Linda Harris states that Decatur is “is happy with the rival system it has tested and is working on making it permanent.”

I don’t park all that much in downtown Decatur, so I recognize I’m probably not the right person truly evaluate this technology.  And I certainly think there’s a future in parking meter technology that automatically deducts funds via a cellphone, but I don’t feel like we’re quite there yet.  At least for the casual user.  The current technology demands a lot more time and energy to register and use the cell phone system, than to just use a quarter or go on looking for non-metered parking. But maybe it’s worth the effort for those hardcore Decatur street-parkers, once up to their ears in quarters.

I’d be interested in hearing more points of view on this, especially now that we’ve had a bit more time for people to try out the new meters.