People use cellphones to talk and to text, but soon Ottawa residents may be able to use them to pay for parking.
The concept is part of the city’s larger plan to give the streets of Ottawa a technological facelift and eventually eliminate most parking meters.
City councillors are in the final stages of a project that will make the parking experience easier for citizens and more efficient – and lucrative – for the city.
Parking meters are an eyesore. They are cumbersome and they're very costly to maintain, says Rideau-Vanier Coun. Georges Bédard, a member of the city's transportation committee.
Pending council’s approval, high-tech pay-and-display machines will replace most of Ottawa’s meters by September 2010.
Tom Keeley of Precise Parklink, the company that manufactures the machines, says that pay-and-display has a number of benefits – people can use credit cards for payment and the removal of meters will create more sidewalk space.
“Typically one pay-and-display meter will replace 10 regular electronic meters, so certainly from a streetscape perspective it will be significantly less cluttered,” he says.
Citizens aren't the only ones who will benefit from these new machines, adds Bédard.
The city is projecting an annual revenue boost of $1.7 million because of the pay-and-display meters, which more than offsets the initial $20,000 cost of installation.
"They're cheaper to operate, they're more centralized and we don't need as many staff," says Bédard.
Councillors are also looking into the idea of a pay-by-cell system, which would allow people to pay for their parking spot via their cellphone.
This technology has already been implemented in other Canadian cities where officials say it has achieved great success.
“We’ve had it for just over three years now and people generally love it,” says Carli Edwards, a Vncouver parking engineer.
Pay-by-cell comes with convenient features such as the ability to “refill” your meter from anywhere in the city, as well as text message reminders when the meter is running out of time. Edwards says the technology makes parking relatively more hassle-free.
For Bédard, it's a no-brainer.
“The benefit is that if I’m sitting in a restaurant, and I’m having a nice meal and it’s raining or snowing outside and I don’t want to go out and feed the meter, I can just phone the automatic system to do it for me.”
The pay-and-display machines will undergo a brief trial period this winter to test how they function in the extreme cold. If all goes according to plan, 100 machines will be added in April, followed by another 500 over the summer.
Bédard says that once an agreement is reached regarding the pay-and-display meters, the pay-by-phone system will become a top priority.
“We want it to be done as soon as possible. We’re moving into a new age of technology.”