PPA Thinking About “Smart Parking Meters”

Agency wants to find 21st century methods of making you mad.

NBC 10 reports that the Philadelphia Parking Authority is considering “smart meters” that would take credit cards, or even allow drivers to pay for parking using a smart phone. The station talked with Vince Fenerty, the PPA’s executive director.

“We’re looking possibly at smart meters, which take credit cards. There’s a lot of hidden costs to that like using a wi-fi network and the Internet that we may want to avoid using,” he said. “We’re also looking at pay by cellphone.”

Being a bit late to the party could benefit Philadelphia, Fenerty said, because it’s learning from the experience of other cities.

Fenerty, by the way, admits it’s still tough to get existing kiosks to take plain old paper money. Good luck with the future! Surely this stuff will never happen again if we just have technology: