“Our goal is to have an additional 1,200 meters here by the week of July 11, and all 1,400 meters in place by the end of July,” Ewing said.
City officials plan to install the first of the meters at a Monday ceremony on Elm Street at Garfield Place.
The move to replace downtown’s parking meters with solar-powered, card-reading models grew out of a 2009 recommendation by consulting firm Walker Parking Consultants, which recommended the move as a way to improve parking service and increase revenue. City Council approved the $1.7 million meter purchase in April. A meter rate increase to $2 per hour, put into effect last summer, was aimed at paying for the new meters, as well as up to 30 multi-space “park and pay” meters in locations like the Court Street median parking area.
Along with reducing the city’s need to manage large numbers of coins and maintain increasingly jam-prone older machines, the new meters are intended to save energy. The solar panels on the individual-space meters give their internal batteries a three-year life, and the use of electronic payment should significantly reduce workload for parking staff.
Ewing reported at a June 28 City Council meeting the new meters would be installed in phases, with software installation and initial testing taking about two weeks. Additional installations of the single-space meters are expected to occur throughout the month, with multi-space meters being installed in the central business district by August.
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