The Australian Know-all parking meters for LA Chris Ayres September 23, 2005
LOS Angeles, the shrine to the motor car that pioneered everything from drive-through restaurants to drive-through cinemas, is about to reinvent the parking meter.
New meters have been installed along a stretch of Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood as part of a six-month experiment. They will send a text message to motorists whose parking time is about to expire and allow them to pay for extra time over the phone.
The meters, which run on solar power, automatically reset themselves to zero when a car leaves a space.
Although the parking meter was invented in 1935 by an American - the newspaper editor and entrepreneur Carl Magee, of Oklahoma City - the US has been slow to update its coin-operated models.
The first American to experience the consequences of an expired meter was the Reverend CHNorth, who was caught by one of the Dual Parking Meter Company's Park-O-Meters, bought by Oklahoma City for $US23 each. In court, he said he had stopped for a minute so he could run into a nearby shop for change. However, the judge dismissed his challenge.
Most of the 5million meters in the US today use the same basic technology as the one that caught Mr North. One of the few benefits to motorists using the new devices, known as "multi-space pay stations", instead of older parking meters, is that they accept payment by credit or debit card.
In January, LA will begin an evaluation of 200 pay stations.
The hi-tech meters are spreading to other cities in California. In Monterey, as in Australia, traffic wardens used to put chalk on the wheels of cars to monitor if they were overstaying their welcome in short-term parking spaces. Enterprising motorists carried cloths to wipe it off.
This ploy no longer works, because short-term parking spaces are equipped with GPS-enabled cameras that scan number plates and know how long a car has been in a particular spot, chalk or no chalk.
Pacific Grove, a coastal resort town, has taken parking meter innovation one step further. Its machines are programmed to increase parking fees over time, so that quick errands cost only a few cents, while longer stays can cost several dollars. A wire grid under the tarmac triggers a sensor when a car pulls in. The information is then beamed to traffic wardens, so they know when time runs out on any parking spot in town. The city is leasing 100 such meters for $US45,000 ($58,400) a year.
To help pay for the technology, the city has taken a rather more old-fashioned approach. It has told its traffic wardens to work on Saturday afternoons.