Certain parking meters to receive upgrades
CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARADVERTISER.COM
The city is moving ahead with plans to convert many parking meters into Smart Meters that allow people to pay with a credit or debit card. This Smart Meter is located along Punchbowl Street, next to the Hawaii State Library.
The public will be able to pay for parking with credit or debit cards at about one-fourth of Oahu’s metered street spaces by sometime next month under the second phase of a pilot Smart Meters project by the city Department of Transportation Services.
About 1,060 of the 4,200 parking spaces under the city’s control will either convert or upgrade to the most advanced Smart Meters, acting DTS Director Mark Garrity said.
Smart Meters are a patented product of the IPS Group, a company with which the city has a contract. The latest Smart Meters have EMV chip credit card technology that is supposed to offer more protection from credit card fraud.
The conversion will take place in the city’s busiest stalls, those that charge a premium $1.50 an hour, Garrity said. Most of those are typically in Honolulu’s urban core, including downtown, Punchbowl and Waikiki, he said.
The city would take a loss if it were to convert meters that charge 75 cents an hour or less because the 75-cent-per-transaction fee it pays the vendor for credit and debit card payments could mean the city wouldn’t make any money, Garrity said.
The installations are scheduled to be completed in October.
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The Smart Meter offers other options for the city such as motion sensors that would detect when a motorist has gone beyond the allowable time and is attempting to feed a machine, and then digitally decline to provide additional time. When the pilot project first began, the machines also allowed motorists to add time remotely by paying via cellphone.
The city chose not to continue with those features, Garrity said.
IPS won a five-year contract, through a competitive request for proposals process, to install the meters and administer the credit card payments. The contract runs through April 23, Garrity said.
The city is paying IPS $641 for each of the brand-new Smart Meters and $126 for the ones that need only to be retrofitted, he said.
Additionally, the city pays IPS $15 a month per machine for handling credit and debit card processing, which includes what the bank charges IPS.
The pilot program began in 2013 when the city installed Smart Meters at 333 of the city’s most heavily used stalls in the downtown-Chinatown area.
Garrity updated the City Council Transportation Committee about the new Smart Meters last week after Councilman Trevor Ozawa introduced Resolution 16-212, which calls on the administration to convert all of the city’s parking meters to Smart Meters, except for 10-cent-an-hour meters in the Salt Lake municipal parking lot.
Ozawa said drivers are more likely to feed their meters when they can use a credit card. Resolution 16-212 is slated for a final vote Wednesday.
City transportation officials are looking at other ways of making street parking more fair, equitable, accommodating and profitable, Garrity said.
“We want to think about, overall, how we manage our on-street parking,” he said. “So we’re likely to look at other options as well. You look at other cities, they do a much better job of managing their on-street parking.”
For instance, in Seattle, motorists pay for parking at pay stations placed on each block that dispense receipts that are to be displayed on vehicle dashboards, he said.
“It’s a much simpler system,” Garrity said. “And they charge more money for longer periods of time, so it generates more revenue for them. I think we could do a better job here of managing our parking resource.”
12 responses to “Certain parking meters to receive upgrades”
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“. . . ways of making street parking more fair, equitable,. . .” One way to make the parking system fairer is to allow all unexpired time to be used by the next driver.
Those meters suck. In downtown, once you pay for an hour, you can’t add another quarter for more time. The initial house must expire before the meter will give you more time. The machine will take your money for additional time but you won’t get additional time.
I was going to a meeting that was expected to last one hour (On Richards Street)
I got there ten minutes early and I paid for an hour. I waited a few minutes and tried to add a quarter to top off my hour. The machine took my money but I still had only 50 minutes left. I left my meeting to pay the meter again and with only 5 minutes left, I added a quarter and received no additional time.
When the meter expired down to zero, only the could I pay for additional time.
It’s set up to maximize their chances of giving you a ticket.
I’ve run into the same issue where I put in coins, but they weren’t credited. If you were in a two-hour spot and not allowed to get additional time credit for your money, I would suggest you let DTS know. The meter might need to be adjusted.
Technically, you are not legally allowed to continue to feed a single meter beyond the time limit. You have an allotted time and then you’re supposed to move your vehicle. (This is why they have various time limits in the first place and don’t allow you to simply pay for an unlimited amount of time.) But It’s a hard law to enforce which is why some enforcement agencies “chalk” tires. I’m not arguing if this should be the law or not, but that is the law.
@bikemom:
Wasn’t the Chinatown merchant issue that people would keep the stall for hours because they could pay beyond the 2 hours? I think a “fair/happy medium” would be to allow people to physically return (yeah, or send someone else) to pay for additional time.
I want stall lines in my neighborhood so people know they CAN park where a driveway has been illegally extended.
Loves – yes, I think you’re correct. Some stalls have maximum parking limits, and they were being abused by people who would stay in them all day.
Hey, SA writers: The meters are not “receiving” upgrades. They are being replaced.
“About 1,060 of the 4,200 parking spaces under the city’s control will convert…”
What they’re saying is that they need to generate at least $15,900 in parking fees on those 1060 meters every single month to just break even on the $15 monthly fee they are paying for each meter. This doesn’t include the cost of the purchase or even maintenance of the meters. What a waste of tax dollars! They should fire IPS and do business directly with the CC processor and I’m sure they can process all of the 1060 meters for less than $100 a month using a city-run Wi-Fi and aggregating the transactions onto one processing terminal!
And in 20 years, HNL might get upgraded to second world
Remote pay stations are not accessible to the disabled who are unable to walk back and forth.
Oh great. More of those meters designed for arid climates, coming to an unfair parking stall near you.
[Besides the fact that they often gobble money without giving time in return…]
…after a few of our good hard rains, the insides of the image areas on these meters are dotted with little (predictable) moisture beads, making it nearly impossible to see any of the details you need to see, such as how much time you have left on the meter.
$.75 per transaction?! They should figure out a way to put Square readers in them and pay > 3% per transaction.