KTRK has a brief blurb on Mayor White’s new toys, which are about to (finally) be deployed downtown. Of course, the new Parking Authority is getting to show them off as if they actually had anything to do with it—
The city’s parking commission showed off the newest marking super meters that will soon hit Houston streets. The meter, nicknamed ‘Luke,’ will allow you to pay parking with bills, credit cards, and eventually, even your cell phone. It even has wireless Internet.
Ah, but it’s good publicity for the Authority. One hopes the meters don’t use the wireless internet to surf for porn, or authorize AAA membership cards as if they were credit cards. Then again, at $10,000 a pop, citizens should expect some amenities.
Your days of fumbling for change just to park downtown is coming to an end.
Your… days… is. Ye gads. One also hopes KTRK can learn to edit better than the Chronicle. My advice to whomever’s writing this stuff is to put the bottle down: “Mom who baby with student allowed to keep custody of daughter.” Ahem.
Meanwhile, back at city hall, these $10,000 beauties will “increase revenue” for the City of Houston, seeing as any meter is probably better than no meter). At least, revenue will improve until a vandal comes along..
$10,000.00 meter meets $0.10 stick of gum. Guess which is going to win?
Update: From the comment below:
However, there’s another hidden reason for the big emphasis on electronic meters replacing our familar coin operated relics: Rate increases. From Vancouver, BC:
In addition, Council as part of the Supplementary Capital Budget approved the purchase of 1000 Electronic mechanisms. These have much greater flexibility than the mechanical equipment and, with a greater number, the City will be able to introduce Smart Cards for payment. In addition, it is more difficult to obtain mechanical parts for maintenance and rate and time changes. It took four months to get parts for the recent rate change approved by Council, while the electronic meters were all changed in one week with no need for parts.
I really hate it when I miss the obvious….
Also, shouldn’t the city get around to updating its website with info on the parking authority?
$10,000 a pop does seem really expensive. One should think that they’d use the wireless to communicate and handle the card authorization, so there’d be no lines to run.
And wireless stuff is pretty cheap these days.
In comparison, do you know how much a regular (vintage now, I suppose) parking meter runs?
Authorization is what the wireless is for. I’m not sure about the standard meters. The last “special” meters the city started installing (where one meter is for eight or so spaces) ran $7,500–8,000. The vintage meters? Who knows. It’s not like the companies that sell them are willing to stick price tags on them, oh no. You have to contact them for a quote. The scary thing is just about every parking meter manufacturer is pushing these fancy electronic toys. Then, of course, there’s the software to run the credit card authorization. Oops, did we mention that it was about $25-30k for the software? (I think COH is getting a package deal here.)
However, there’s another hidden reason for the big emphasis on electronic meters replacing our familar coin operated relics: Rate increases. From Vancouver, BC:
I really hate it when I miss the obvious….