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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

New Meter Ticks Off, Pinches Parkers You Won’t Find Unexpired Time Anymore If Cities Feed Orders To Creator’s Firm

Lacy Mccrary Knight-Ridder Newspapers

One of life’s little victories is pulling into a parking spot and finding that the meter still has time left. Enjoy those moments while you can.

The latest threat to civilization as we know it is a parking meter that eliminates free time. It’s equipped with a small computer that resets the indicator to zero as soon as a vehicle leaves the parking spot.

And it’s probably coming soon to a city near you.

New Hope Borough in Bucks County, Pa., which has had parking problems for years, has agreed to test 10 of the new meters from May to July. Philadelphia Parking Authority officials have been given a demonstration, as have Ardmore, Pa.; Harrisburg, Pa.; and Atlantic City, N.J.

Officials in Baltimore and Newark, N.J., plan to check out the devices next week. And New York, Reading, Pa., and Seaside Heights, N.J., have arranged for tests in the near future.

It is called an “intelligent parking meter,” and this baby is sophisticated. It looks like an ordinary meter but can count and time every car, track coins, accurately display how long a car has been at an expired meter, be programmed for a maximum amount of time and then give not a second more even if more coins are deposited, and display a bright red light when your time is up - making enforcement easier.

It can do all this because it contains a microcomputer powered by two lithium batteries and its own microprocessor. It is able to sense the presence of a vehicle with a combination of software and sensing technology.

“It can be as ruthlessly efficient or as kind and gentle as a municipality wants it to be,” said its creator, Vincent Yost, president and CEO of Intelligent Devices Inc., of Harleysville, Pa.

This brainy meter will outwit motorists who breathlessly run up to a parking officer who’s filling out a ticket and plead that they just parked there two minutes ago.

“It accurately displays the time a car has been parked since the meter expired,” Yost said. “This is the source of a lot of controversy. Lots of people will run down the street and say: ‘I just pulled in there.’ The meter doesn’t lie. If he says he parked there only five minutes ago and it’s actually an hour, the meter will say one hour.”

As for eliminating free time, Yost said the meters would increase revenue to cities without increasing parking rates or expanding the number of hours the meters operate. It could also eliminate having meters fed all day by people who work nearby or shoppers who delegate someone to put more change in them.

“If a city or borough wants to eliminate meter feeding and improve the turnover of cars, these meters we’ve designed can be set to give a maximum amount of time and no more time can be purchased,” Yost said. “If the meters are set for, say, one hour and it gets down to five minutes, the original parker thinks he’ll put in more and stay. The meter will take the money - but he will get no more time.”

Yost said the new meters would fit inside cases already on the streets of most cities and be somewhat more expensive than current models, which run from $175 to $250. The new ones could be leased, he added, based on the amount of additional revenue they return.

In any case, not everyone in New Hope thinks even testing the meters is a good idea.

“Anything free is nice. We just had a halfhour free this morning when we pulled in,” tourist Nansi Krauss, 30, of North Brunswick, N.J., said Thursday. “I don’t think the town needs to be so greedy.”

Sandy and Ken Moreno, owners of the Jewelry Box, said they would start a petition drive next month to try to stop the borough from permanently installing the meters.

“It’s going to kill our business,” Ken Moreno said.

“It will drive tourists out of town,” agreed Ciro Torina, 31, owner of Ciro’s restaurant and pizzeria on South Main Street.

But Borough Councilman Fred Williamson 4th said: “I’m in favor of it if it brings in additional revenue without any additional taxes.”

The meters were first tested last fall in Ardmore. Don Cannon, director of public works for Lower Merion Township, said they increased revenue and gave officials all sorts of useful information.

Siobhra DeWar, 47, a New Hope resident and mule-barge captain, was not impressed.

“The motto of this town,” DeWar said, “ought to be: ‘Welcome to New Hope. Pay your parking ticket, and get out of town.”’