The days of scrounging for a quarter are numbered.
City Treasurer Tishaura Jones is in the midst of a process to test various types of parking meters to decide which will replace most downtown single-space meters. Currently, about 10,000 parking meters line the streets of the city of St. Louis; soon, there will be fewer parking meters, but many of them will be smarter. The new multi-space meters will accept various types of payments, including debit cards, credit cards, dollar bills, coins, and smart-phone apps.
The new meters also are expected to allow for “dynamic” pricing, which means different parts of the city, or different blocks—sometimes on different days—could be charged various rates to park. The computerized meters also will supply data to make it easier for the treasurer’s office to track how often and when meters are used.
“We’re not trying to gouge people,” Jones says. “We’re trying to increase the technology in the most effective and efficient way possible.” That said, she does not expect the change to be revenue neutral. “The industry standard usually says that when a new technology or an alternative form of payment is introduced, revenue tends to go up about 30 percent.”
Parking is big business for the treasurer’s office. It brought in $14.6 million in 2013. About 52 percent of that amount was from garages and lots; 15 percent was from parking meters; and about 30 percent, or $4.3 million, was from payment of fines for parking violations.
The new meters will be swapped out beginning this fall, after a study and analysis of four pilot sites. Input is currently being sought online. Many of the older, single-space meters will remain in less congested areas, though downtown, the Central West End, and other highly traveled areas might get the new multi-space meters starting this fall.
Currently, multi-space meters are located downtown near Broadway and Pine, as well as along 10th Street between Washington and Chestnut. The multi-space meters use a computerized kiosk in the middle of each block that monitors the numbered spaces on that side of the street. One pilot site, along Euclid Avenue in the Central West End, has single-space meters that are equipped to handle various methods of payment.
To use a multi-space meter, the driver parks the car at a numbered space and enters the number of that space into the keypad at the kiosk. After entering the space number and making a payment for up to two hours, a receipt is issued. If the person who parked wants to extend the time allowed to park in the space, he or she will be able to add time to the meter by using a smart-phone app.
Other cities have moved to multi-space parking that uses computerized payment stations located on each block. The type of meter used depends on the needs of the neighborhood, Jones says. “Washington D.C. replaced single-space meters with multi-space pay stations in busy areas of the central business district downtown," she says. "But as you go farther out of downtown, there are single-space meters."
Jones sees Grand Center and the Locust Business District as other areas where there likely will be changes related to meter parking. “There’s a lot of new commercial energy in that area,” Jones says. “Also, The Grove has seen tremendous growth in the last few years, and they have a huge residential-parking problem. We are in talks with them to see if we can do something specific with this study to address their issues.”
Areas that are not booming have a different problem: There are hundreds of meters that seldom get used and might be removed. “There are some areas where we have removed meters because it costs more for us to send maintenance staff out there to check them and empty them than it generates,” Jones says.
Currently, meter rates downtown are $1 per hour. In Grand Center, it’s 75 cents per hour. A normal parking ticket is $10 if paid within two weeks; if not, the fine doubles. Illegal parking in no-parking zones between 4 and 6 p.m. could bring an initial $25 fine. Parking within 10 feet of a fire hydrant and other types of public-safety parking violations bring a $30 fine. Illegal parking in a space marked for the disabled has a $75 fine.
Meter maintenance was outsourced from the treasurer’s office in 2009. Citation processing was outsourced in 2004. More than 375,000 tickets were written in 2013, with a closure rate of 75 percent.
Hourly meter rates in the city are among the lowest in the country for large cities. Detroit, Charlotte, and San Diego have about the same parking rates, but New York City and Los Angeles charge about $5 per hour at a parking meter. Fines in St. Louis are comparably lower, with a baseline of $10 being much less than a $30 fine in Houston or a $40 fine in Seattle.
One goal of the new meters will be better data collection. Each pay station will have a record of what spots are taken, when the street is full, and how long people stay. On blocks where it’s often full, those streets might get higher rates. On streets where fewer cars are parked, the rates might be lowered. With the city offering six parking garages, for example, it might make sense to give people an incentive to park in a garage instead.
Jones says her department will be looking at demand for on-street and off-street parking. “Our philosophy is, 'If you’re going to be there for more than two hours, then go to a lot or a garage.'
“With the new technology, we’ll be able to figure that out, because all of that will be networked. We will be able to know in real time,” says Jones.
Personnel who are monitoring meters will be able to tell which cars are parked at expired meters via handheld devices. They can then go to those cars and issue tickets without having to check all of the cars. This time-saving device could lead to lower enforcement and personnel costs. Despite the advanced technology, though, some new enforcement techniques are not yet cost-effective.
At a town hall meeting at the Central Library this past Tuesday, several vendors explained that the parking equivalent of a red-light camera ticket is not yet financially feasible. The technology does exist, however, for a parking kiosk to be alerted when a parking space is occupied and when the allotted time expires. But the detection device that would need to be installed at each space—called a “puck,” because of its resemblance to a hockey puck—is too expensive to make it cost-effective. If the cost of the pucks declines in the future, parking tickets could be mailed to a person’s house when a violation is detected, as long as the payment station can detect the car's license plate.
Other realities loom further down the road. “In 20 years, we won’t have parking meters,” David Cummins, senior vice president and managing director at Xerox, said during a panel discussion. In several years, he added, the federal government could require new cars to be equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle communications systems for safety reasons. After that, vehicle-to-infrastructure communication systems could allow parking fees to be paid by accessing a person’s bank account via the car's communication link, he predicted.
Meanwhile, many parking slots located downtown, in the Central West End, Grand Center, and The Grove will accept your credit card, your smartphone app—or a quarter.
