Top off Your Parking Meter with a Cell Call

dstone writes "Vancouver, Canada has just become the first major city in North America to allow motorists to feed their parking meters with their cell phone. Drivers call a number on each meter, the system recognizes them by Caller ID, they enter how many minutes they want, and that's it. The system sends them a reminder text message before their time is up and they can extend their time remotely. The catch? The company contracted to provide the service, Verrus, makes their money through a 30-cent 'convenience fee.' Less pockets full of change, less parking tickets, seems like a step forward."

Re:Kinda defeats a parking meter feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, here in Calgary CANADA, there's been a big hubub recently about people parking all day at parking meters and just paying the fine. It was cheaper to pay the $25 fine than to pay $28 for eight hours of parking.
Apparently a secretary for couple of law offices would regularily just walk into city hall with a list of license numbers of the partners and pay off all the fines on-masse

City of Calgary is considering raising the daily fine to $300 now

Re:convenience fees

[BunnyClaws]

Very true. I would be happy to pay the extra 30 cents for the convenience of not having to look for change. I never have change on me. Now what I would really like is for vending machines to take debit cards because once again I never have change on me. I am all about convenience which is the reason I pay an extra dollar for milk from Walgreens instead of going to the grocery store.

"Convenience" fees! Heh.

[ScentCone]

I remember the first time (too many years back, now) that I experienced Convenience while I was in line at a McDonalds grabbing a burger on my way someplace. I told the cashier I wanted a Diet Coke as my combo drink. She handed me the now-expected empty cup and told me that I would be getting the drink from the "Convenience Center" across the store.

"Convenient for who?" I asked. And she told me, unblinkingly, that it had in fact really made their job a lot easier.

Re:Kinda defeats a parking meter feature

[danzona]

Here in Chicago, most parking meters have a time limit for parking. So it will say 25c / 30 minutes, 2 hour limit.

In Chicago, it appears that enforcement of this is half hearted (compared with places like Carmel where they use chalk to mark the tires to enforce the time limit).

Anyway, it would not be hard for the cell phone parking meter to enforce the time limit. So after 4 quarters, the parking meter won't take any more money and the driver has to move.

Wouldn't it be great if the parking meter could tell that you hadn't paid or moved the car and then issued the cell phone an instant meter violation charge? I believe that is $50 in Chicago. Plus a 30 cent convenience fee.

Fffft, old news

[Opportunist]

We in the old world have been having this system for about 2 years now.

Without convenience fee.

Estonia started doing this three years ago...

[Osrin]

http://www.usj.com.my/usjXpress/details.php3?table =usjXpress&ID=256 [usj.com.my]

I travel there on business from time to time, folks that I work with there have been doing something like this using SMS for a while now.

It is good to see the US catching up.

So long, and thanks for the free parking...

[dwandy]

All my calls come from [phone] [securityfocus.com]

Re:Kinda defeats a parking meter feature

[dirty]

We had that problem in Philadelphia, so they just increased the ticket price rather than actually deal with the cost of parking in the city.

Re:instead of cellphone...

[Chirs]

We've got something similar in some areas of Saskatoon, Canada. It's more like a preloaded parking card though.

You swipe your card, meter deducts money from the card equal to the cost of the max amount of time you can park there. When you come back, you swipe again and the meter refunds the unused amount.

Re:Kinda defeats a parking meter feature

[Anonymous Coward]

rather than actually deal with the cost of parking in the city

Yeah, cause we wouldn't want to let a market determine the cost of a service, now would we?

I both live and work in the city, and I'm pleased to see any increase in the barrier to outsiders bringing their cars into town. I'm especially pleased to see harsher penalties for flouting parking laws, because residents (the people who provide the most support to cities in cash and other ways) deserve the chance at parking that these laws provide, by keeping spots turning over.

Don't like the cost of parking? Leave your goddam car outside city limits, and use the excellent regional or urban transit system. When I lived outside Philadelphia, I did. Now that I live in the city, I walk two miles to work. Muuuuhhaaaahaaaaaa!

Re:Kinda defeats a parking meter feature

[Anthracks]

Boston has become Nazis with regard to parking. It's nice if you live there, since there's half a chance now you can actually park on your own street. But the last time I parked illegally (about a year ago, before I had a local permit), they towed my car and I had over $100 in fines! It's definitely worth it to spend an extra few minutes cruising for a meter than chancing the "resident parking only" areas. Plus all the meters are free from 8pm-8am, and all day on Sundays.

Re:Scare quotes

[bunions]

They still have to empty the meters. People can still pay by coin in case they (gasp) don't have a cellphone.

it's pretty convenient if you remember that it rains pretty much all winter long in Vancouver and that you can get pretty wet standing there digging around for dimes as opposed to getting inside and then phoning in.

It's not a misnomer at all. It is more convenient for you and the city (or someone) has to pay more in credit card processing costs.

Re:"Convenience" fees! Heh.

[vistic]

I think I mentioned this a few posts up... but movie theaters generally throw out a couple of huge trash bags full of popcorn at the end of every day. Knowing better, I can honestly say that someone getting a free refill on popcorn is absolutely not going to increase popcorn prices for anyone else at all.

And in any case, I don't think a thing like this is worth being a dick about to other people and ruining their day. You've lost perspective.

You're the guy that makes employees' lives hell, but then we go back the break room and share stories about this horrible customer who made a big deal about something, and that at least helps make things a little better.