City

Pocket full of change: Officials recommend residents carry coins when using electric parking meters

By Meredith Newman

Syracuse residents are temporarily advised to carry change with them if they plan to use the city’s electronic parking meters.

Although the current meters have the ability to accept credit cards, city officials plan to replace 270 electronic meters soon and recommend bringing change in case the meters lose their wireless data connection, The Post-Standard reported on Thursday.

If the credit-card processing doesn’t work, the meters will continue to accept coins, according to the article.

“Should there be an outage we will let people know,” Alexander Marion, the mayor’s press secretary, said in the article. “We encourage drivers to bring change with them just in case there is an unexpected outage.”

Currently, one-third of the city’s revenue from parking meters comes from credit cards and if the meters were unable to process credit cards, it would hurt the city’s revenue collection.



The Syracuse Common Council unanimously approved a $2.54 million plan to replace the parking meters in September.

At the time of the decision, the council was divided on whether the city should stay with the old meters, which would eventually not be able to take credit card payments, or replace them with new ones. The group finally came to the conclusion that the meters should be replaced.

The update was suggested after Velocita Wireless announced it would cease operations. The current Parkeon Inc. meters use Mobitex technology, which is operated by Velocita Wireless, to transmit data.

“Basically, it’s the updated version of the parking meters,” said Craig Wilson, a legislative aide for the council, in an Oct. 4 Daily Orange article. “If you want to think of it this way, it would be like an upgrade from an iPhone 2 to an iPhone 5. The technology is outdated and they have to update it.”

The company that replaces the old meters will have three years to install them, but the meters will be in use for several years after. If technology changes during the three-year period, the company will also be expected to upgrade the machines.





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