Parking Meters Get Smarter

Technology is taking much of the fun out of finding a place to park the car.

In Pacific Grove, Calif., parking meters know when a car pulls out of the spot and quickly reset to zero -- eliminating drivers' little joy of parking for free on someone else's quarters.

METER MADE   See examples of parking-meter innovations.

In Montreal, when cars stay past their time limit, meters send real-time alerts to an enforcement officer's hand-held device, reducing the number of people needed to monitor parking spaces -- not to mention drivers' chances of getting away with violations. Meanwhile, in Aspen, Colo., wireless "in-car" meters may eliminate the need for curbside parking meters altogether: They dangle from the rear-view mirror inside the car, ticking off prepaid time.

These and other innovations are reshaping the parking meter, a device that dates to 1933, when an Oklahoma inventor named Carl Magee, working with some colleagues, came up with the coin-operated, single-space mechanical meter as a means of freeing up parking spaces in downtown Oklahoma City. Two Arkansas companies have dominated the industry: POM Inc., of Russellville, which traces its lineage to Mr. Magee and his band of inventors; and Duncan Parking Technologies Inc., of Harrison.

One of POM's current products, a 2-space meter with smartcard reader, high-visibility display, and expanded capacity coin vault.

Electronic and digital parking meters arrived in the 1980s and 1990s, but real change began a few years ago, when municipalities began toying with meters that regulate a number of spaces at once, including "pay and display" models that print out receipts for drivers to place on their dashboards.

Those multispace models solve many of the problems associated with traditional meters, which are ugly, error-prone, easy to vandalize and only take coins. Multispace meters are efficient, harder to vandalize -- and they take credit and debit cards, as well as cash. Parking czars in municipalities across the country are starting to realize parking meters' original goals: generating revenue and creating continuous turnover of parking spaces on city streets.

Now, in cities from New York to Seattle, the door is open to a host of wireless technologies seeking to improve the parking meter even further. Chicago and Sacramento, Calif., among others, are equipping enforcement vehicles with infrared cameras capable of scanning license plates even at 30 miles an hour. Using a global positioning system, the cameras can tell which individual cars have parked too long in a two-hour parking zone. At a cost of $75,000 a camera, the system is an expensive upgrade of the old method of chalking tires and then coming back two hours later to see if the car has moved.

Parkeon's multi-space & display meter.

The camera system, supplied by Canada's Autovu Technologies, also helps identify scofflaws and stolen vehicles, by linking to a database of unpaid tickets and auto thefts. Sacramento bought three cameras in August, and since then its practice of "booting," or immobilizing, cars with a lot of unpaid tickets has increased sharply. Revenue is soaring, too. According to Howard Chan, Sacramento's parking director, Sacramento booted 189 cars and took in parking revenue of $169,000 for the fiscal year ended in June 2004; for fiscal 2005, the city expects to boot 805 cars and take in more than $475,000.

Mr. Chan says his department has located 11 stolen cars since it started using the camera system in April. "The police are going, 'Holy smoke! What are you guys doing here?' " Mr. Chan says. The city plans to buy two more cameras.

In downtown Montreal, more than 400 "pay-by-space" meters, each covering 10 to 15 spaces, are a twist on regular multispace meters. Motorists park, then go to the meter to type in the parking-space number and pay by card or coin. These meters, which cost about $9,000 each, identify violators in real time for enforcement officers carrying hand-held devices: a likeness of the block emerges on screen and cars parked illegally show up in red.

"My parking agents don't have to check every spot, only the ones in red," says Michel Philibert, a manager at the Montreal parking authority. In winter, the technology allows the city's parking agents to spend more time reading computer screens inside their warm cars, instead of patrolling the curbs. Motorists can use any meter in the system, no matter how far from their car they may be, to purchase more time. Cale Parking Systems USA, a Clearwater, Fla., unit of Cale Access AB, says people using credit cards occasionally choose to pay the maximum anyway.

Coral Gables, Fla., recently became one of the first U.S. cities where drivers can buy parking time using their cellphones. After registering a phone number, credit card and license-plate number online with Mint Technology Corp., of Toronto, motorists park, dial 1-888-PAY-MINT and then enter the lot number to start their "parking session." In addition to the parking fee, Mint charges drivers a 25-cent surcharge for the service, or $7 a month for unlimited sessions.

The old method of chalking tires to enforce parking.

In Aspen, drivers pay $50 to get an in-car meter and then load as much as $200 of parking time on it. The meter hangs from rear-view mirrors, ticking off the minutes every time it is switched on. In the resort town, which has 5,200 year-round residents, 18,000 "in-car" meters have been sold, says Tim Ware, Aspen's parking director.

Of course, change sometimes comes too fast. Seeking to discourage beachgoers from hogging oceanfront parking spaces, Newport Beach, Calif., installed meters that communicated with sensors planted in the concrete that could tell when a car pulled in or out of the spot. If a car didn't move after an hour, or in some cases a half-hour, the meter wouldn't take any more coins. Problem solved? No: Residents and even local merchants complained that wasn't enough time for shopping or surfing, and the meters came out.

Pacific Grove, Calif., took a different tack. The city got so fed up with tourists leaving cars in its zoned spaces all day while visiting the aquarium in neighboring Monterey that in December it installed meters with a progressive-rate schedule, leased from InnovaPark LLC of Westport, Conn. Some meters on short-term spaces can be programmed to reject quarters after 20 minutes. Others charge $1 for the first hour and then increase to as much as $4 for the third hour. Meters reset to zero as soon as a car pulls out.

Write to Christopher Conkey at christopher.conkey@wsj.com