After the Federal conviction related to Portland’s last paystation contract, the City has embarked on a new procurement for paystations, and now has four different models from two manufacturers installed in the vicinity of SW 3rd and Salmon.
They’d love to have you try them and give feedback.
2 responses to “Corruption-Free Paystations”
It would be nice if they would take this opportunity to change the payment philosophy. Stop forcing drivers to decide at the start how long they want to park, punishing them if they stay just a few minutes longer than planned, and arbitrarily limiting the maximum amount of time they are allowed to stay. This micromanaging is poor customer service and when it discourages people from going to a metered area (at all) or neighborhoods/businesses from supporting meters, it has real planning/sustainability effects.
Instead, have users just swipe their card when arriving and leaving, and (like the Smart Park garages seem to do) charge a higher per-hour rate after a certain amount of time that discourages long-term use. Or go with the San Francisco model and dynamically adjust rates. Cash users would need to prepay as now or possibly acquire a parking card from businesses.
And if we want to keep the extra spaces gained by not marking them out and numbering them, people could possibly be required to link their license plate to their payment card.
Lastly, this could speed up enforcement as officers could get information about the whole block of vehicles instead of having to check every individual one.
This is a good idea, but I would also like to see better demand management, like the SF Park system. Variable pricing for street parking is the future, and this is our opportunity to hop on board.