Pay-by-cell Meters Slow to Start in San Francisco


From the San Francisco Examiner.


0 responses to “Pay-by-cell Meters Slow to Start in San Francisco”

  1. Not surprising.

    You’ve got park, dial a phone number, presumably navigate a phone tree which includes determining your “meter ID” or something similar, then punch in your 16 digit credit card number, 4 digit expiration, and 3 digit CVV in order to proceed. Oh, by the way, none of that transaction is secure.

  2. Seems like just having the parking charge show up on your phone bill would be a great simplification.

    Even better if you pointed the camera on your phone at the meter to read the meter id as a barcode.

  3. A far better way would have you text the meter number to something, and have the charge show on your cell phone bill. Simple, fast, and effective.

  4. True also pointed out the success of Muni’s prepaid parking card, which was introduced in 2005. More than 114,539 cards have been purchased for a total of $4.2 million, according to True.

    Unfortunately the Portland SmarkPark card (or whatever it is called) just doesn’t have the same traction in Portland…

    Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a smart card that was good for parking (both on-street AND in parking garages) AND for transit – and valid for all parking meters and transit in the four-county area (at a minimum)?

    And since Seattle and Portland use same/similar systems, what if the card was interchangable – so that if I had a Portland card that, that I could use the same exact card as a King County Metro fare, or for parking near Pike Place Market?

    Of course, reloading one of Portland’s cards makes no sense:

    1. Come to the addresses listed above with a check or credit card. (Why can’t you just use cash?)
    2. Phone in your order (503) 823-7733 with your credit card number to have it mailed to you. To re-load, mail card in with credit card number. (Why do they need my card mailed to them to reload???)

    It would make far, far greater sense – if it were combined with transit, to use TVM style machines that were positioned throughout the region that would be capable of reloading these cards. One machine would handle all of your transportation payment needs.

  5. Erik,
    A stored value card (like is used in many places) that worked for all local transit modes, parking, toll roads, etc would be great.

    What would be even greater is if, say, Tri-Met, C-Tran, Sound Transit, and Metro (Seattle) [Let’s also include taking the Amtrak Cascades line while we’re at it] would agree on a single system, so that if you put $40 on your card, that would be enough for a ride on the Green Line to Union Station, the Cascades to Seattle, and then the SLUT to Lake Union. Or something.

    Anyhow… Stored Value. The future.

    Another interesting tibbit on my visit to NYC: Not one of the thousands of MetroCard machines I saw was out of order.

  6. I’m not sure getting Amtrak into the mix would be worth it – it has taken a LOT of work and effort for the few services where non-Amtrak tickets can be valid on Amtrak services and vice-versa.

    I do know that Sounder has a program; so does Metrolink – but the tickets have a LOT of restrictions on them. Keep in mind that they are commuter rail systems where the cost of a ticket is typically $5 or $6 dollars. I paid anywhere from $22 to $34 for a one-way trip to or from Seattle (depending on train, day, load factor, etc.) Using a stored value card for just one trip on Amtrak would likely wipe out your card’s value.

    Also, Amtrak requires a reservation before travel, so at a minimum you have to buy a ticket at the ticket window prior to departure.

    But – if it can be worked out it would be pretty cool.

  7. Maybe a better question(s) is|are:

    Why doesn’t Portland have a stored-value card for transit?

    Are there examples of multiple transit agencies collectively using the same stored value card?

    Are there examples of transit-oriented stored value cards that are used for more than just transit (ie, transit/tolls/parking)

    What are the drawbacks to a stored value system?

  8. MRB: Portland is way behind on a lot of things. Transit is just one of those things. Some of my biggest issues with transit here:

    *Outdated “hub and spoke” downtown centric route system. Very little suburb-to-suburb routes.
    *No concistantcy or colaboration between transit agentcys. [There are four “route 4’s” in the region, two being in the trimet area, one in vancouver, one in salem]
    *Lack of express and limited routes; replacement of quick express routes with slow light rail that stops at every stop.
    *Bus stop every other block instead of every 1/4-1/2 mile like most cities
    *Lack of higher capacity buses
    *Cash only fares; ticket machines take cash only for the most part too [who carries cash anymore?]
    *Fare zone system makes no sense what-so-ever.

    I know I am ranting here off topic but the point is we would never see anything like “stored value cards” to make life easier; it doesn’t serve to force people out of cars or to subsidize downtown development interests.

  9. I take some offense to the off-topicness, but I’ll address them anyway:

    *Outdated “hub and spoke” downtown centric route system. Very little suburb-to-suburb routes.

    “Outdated”? By what definition? The current trend in planning is to increase densities in downtown, so i’d say a hub and spoke model, rather than a point-to-point system, is actually ‘current-dated’.

    *No concistantcy or colaboration between transit agentcys. [There are four “route 4’s” in the region, two being in the trimet area, one in vancouver, one in salem]

    There is one Tri-Met route #4. They’re just labeled differently for simplicity. Imagine, someone like me who lives in inner NE but wants to head to South Portland Park (which I do frequently). I take the #12 (Sandy) which becomes the #12 (Barbur). I don’t transfer, and it’s easy to figure out because it’s the #12 all the way. Otherwise, I’d have to magically guess that the the #12 turns into the #86 (or whatever) after it goes through downtown.

    *Lack of express and limited routes; replacement of quick express routes with slow light rail that stops at every stop.

    Yep, the express routes suck. Some of the routes suck. Some stops are WAY too close together. There needs to be extensive review. At some point, they’ll have to start from scratch with the bus routes.

    But sorry, the MAX is not slower. Try taking the MAX from Goose Hollow to Beaverton Central in the evening and there is no competition. The MAX is faster every time. No, it’s not faster when there isn’t any traffic, but westside MAX is for commuters primarily and it absolutely saves them a ton of time.

    *Bus stop every other block instead of every 1/4-1/2 mile like most cities

    See above.

    *Lack of higher capacity buses

    Yes, some articulated buses for our high-ridership routes seems to be in order. Any reason that we don’t have it, at least for peak periods on busy routes?

    *Cash only fares; ticket machines take cash only for the most part too [who carries cash anymore?]
    *Fare zone system makes no sense what-so-ever.

    It makes sense, that the farther you go you should probably pay more, but our zone boundaries are a bit ridiculous. (zone 2 in irvington? A all-zone fare that is the single highest in the nation?)

    [Moderator: Italics added for clarity.]

  10. There are four “route 4’s” in the region, two being in the trimet area, one in vancouver, one in salem

    This ought to be a new, separate topic (Bob? Chris?), but I’ll address this single point.

    I am not sure Cherriots should be impacted as there is no direct connection between Cherriots and TriMet/C-Tran, but it is a valid point that TriMet and C-Tran, as they do interchange at multiple points, should not have duplicative route numbers. In transit agencies that do overlap or at least connect, they usually do have a common route numbering system so when someone says “Line 4”, the follow-up question isn’t “Do you mean TriMet 4 or C-Tran 4?”

    I also agree, TriMet should end the practice of using the same route number when interlining through downtown. Few passengers actually stay on the interline route through downtown, and it only takes a simple schedule notation to state that at the end of, for example, the 12 Barbur line, the bus continues beyond downtown as, say, 13 Sandy.

    As an example, take a look at this timetable for King County Metro’s 5 route. At the far right of the downtown/inbound schedule is a notation that says “to route” and lists the interlined route number (usually 54 or 55). If it reads “CB” that means the bus heads to Central Base. (TriMet does not generally allow passengers on deadhead runs to Merlo, Center Street or Powell, which helps reduce TriMet’s efficiency – TriMet could become much more productive by having revenue runs to the garages. I know that TriMet does have a lot of busses in Beaverton make a trip on the 67-Jenkins/158th line, which gets the bus near Merlo Garage), but this needs to be implemented systemwide. Busses that deadhead from downtown Portland to Powell could operate as line 17s, reducing the number of scheduled line 17s needed.

    C-Tran ought to number all of their busses in the 100 series. SMART (Wilsonville) already numbers their routes in the 200 series (except for the 1X Wilsonville-Salem Express, whose number makes absolutely no sense because it duplicates a Cherriots route number, 1-South Commercial). CAT (Canby) operates a line 1 to Oregon City that connects with TriMet busses, despite TriMet having a 1 bus (Vermont). (CAT also has a route 2 and 3, which TriMet does not.) Fareless SAM (Sandy), Columbia County, and the SCTD (Molalla) do not number their routes. The Yamhill County Transit Area in general does not number their routes, but their McMinnville-Hillsboro route carries the schedule #33 (which duplicates TriMet’s 33-McLoughlin and Fremont lines). The McMinnville-Sherwood route appears to be unnumbered, as does the McMinnville-Salem route. TriMet, as it stands now, could assign each route, interlined route, MAX and Streetcar line a distinct number, AND renumber the 100 series routes into a two-digit route number, and still have fewer than 99 routes (1-99).

  11. “TriMet should end the practice of using the same route number when interlining through downtown. Few passengers actually stay on the interline route through downtown, and it only takes a simple schedule notation to state that at the end of, for example, the 12 Barbur line, the bus continues beyond downtown as, say, 13 Sandy.”

    I sometimes ride the 4 from SE Portland to N Portland, and MRB rides the 12 across town as well, so it looks like people do use it… But what is the advantage of changing the numbers? (Other than for people like us that talk about the 35G vs 35M.) Are people actually getting confused because they got on the 12 downtown, and then ended up in the wrong place? And wouldn’t those same people have gotten confused waiting at Lombard TC because there are two 4’s, 6’s, 75’s, and yellow lines there? You can’t just get on a bus that has the right number, you have to get on the line going to right direction as well, and in that regard, the buses that go through downtown are exactly the same as buses that go through any other transfer point or anyplace else…

    Amtrak changes the number on their trains at the end of the line: Train 11 runs south from Seattle to LA, and train 14 runs north from LA to Seattle, and we could do that: Bus 4 would run from N to SE, and Bus 5 would run from SE to N, but that seems like it would confuse the average newcomer and not give us much. (Given that most Amtrak passengers don’t know or care what number train they are on, they booked the ticket based on where they are going, so having the train numbers be confusing isn’t a problem for Amtrak…)

  12. On the bus routes that I have been riding, Trimet has eliminated several of the stops along the way – particularly near PSU – that has resulted in speeding up my route by almost 5 minutes (on a 20 minute trip to downtown from SE).

    I thought that was pretty cool. Now all they need to do is take it further.

    If we ever get streetcars on the eastside, the stops should be like every 5-10 blocks, or it will be a waste.

  13. Trimet has eliminated several of the stops along the way – particularly near PSU – that has resulted in speeding up my route by almost 5 minutes (on a 20 minute trip to downtown from SE).

    Unfortunately I can’t claim the same, despite also boarding a bus at PSU (on the 12-Barbur line) – because the bus far too often runs late on the 12-S line or one of the lines that it operates as into Gresham (i.e. 4, 9 or 20).

    Further it takes longer to board at the few remaining stops, and despite TriMet claiming that there is less “bus bunching”, it actually happens just as much. In fact the stop that I use (the main PSU stop) is often affected by cars using the area as a loading/unloading area as well, thus causing busses to have to stop further back, with passengers having to walk back to their bus (thus delaying the bus stop), and causing busses behind it to wait in traffic before it can pull up to the curb.

    If we’re going to start a policy of having minimum distances between stops, fine, but it needs to be handled equitably between all modes of transport, and needs to take into consideration the disinvestment that TriMet places upon bus stops. In other words, if there are no improved bus stops, the bus needs to stop ANYWHERE for safety purposes, even if it means adding “E”, “L” or “X” busses to provide express or limited service along the same route.

    It is inexcusable to make someone walk along the side of a busy, narrow Portland street with no sidewalks to walk to a bus. (Garden Home Boulevard comes to mind, as well as some parts of Capitol Highway, and Taylors Ferry Road.)

  14. ^ Yes, different routes that share the # ARE confusing for people. Even for people who have been riding for 5 years.

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