Parking Meter hours downtown

[Johnb911]

The reason for having to put your tag number into the system is... the parking enforcement vehicles have been equipped with tag readers on their vehicles. So all they have to do is drive along side of the line of cars and their computer will alert them if a vehicle hasn't paid for parking. The meter maid still has to get out and place the ticket on the vehicle. If they could automate the system and have a ticket mailed to you (like pike pass) then you could place the tag reading equipment on a city bus or other city vehicle and automate that job all together.

I just think if we had an app, you store all that info in your profile (like I did in Breckenridge) and I don't have to go to a kiosk and plug in my plate information and pay and go back to my car....I can do it all from my phone. And if I'm out having a good time and my parking is down to 15 minutes, I get an alert, pull up the app, add another hour or two, and be done. So much simpler.

[shawnw]

The entire point of parking meters (at least when they were invented) is to encourage turnover, which is defeated if they made it easier for you to stay all day with an app.

[Johnb911]

is there any advantage to turnover? IE does it cost more money to park for the first hour than it does in subsequent hours? i would think the point is to collect money for people parking in a spot. To me, the easier you make it for people to pay, the more money you will ultimately collect. Otherwise, what does turnover do? In fact, encouraging turnover actually guarantees that a spot will go unparked in for a certain amount of time (the time it takes between me leaving and you parking, whatever amount that is) so i would think encouraging turnover would be anti-productive, if the goal is to collect parking fees anyway.

[d-usa]

Spots without cars is actually the point of forcing turnover. If done correctly, paid street parking is not a revenue generator, but an open spot generator. By ensuring that people can’t just show up early and take up a spot all day, the same spots are available for people visiting the area in the morning, late morning, lunch, early afternoon, and late afternoon. They don’t want one person paying for 10 hours for one spot, they want 5+ people paying for spots, visiting 5 different places to spend money there.

A well manged parking program doesn’t generate parking, it generates traffic for the businesses in the area.

[shawnw]

Thank you for explaining it much better than I could have.

[Uptowner]

And between surface lots, the new City garage, and the planned garage in film row, there’s an all day option in pretty much every sector of town. I always gripe about the 1hr parking though, it’s hard to park, walk to building, ride elevator, wait in waiting room while secretary offers tiny bottle of water, have a meeting, and return to the car in 60 minutes.

[Johnb911]

Spots without cars is actually the point of forcing turnover. If done correctly, paid street parking is not a revenue generator, but an open spot generator. By ensuring that people can’t just show up early and take up a spot all day, the same spots are available for people visiting the area in the morning, late morning, lunch, early afternoon, and late afternoon. They don’t want one person paying for 10 hours for one spot, they want 5+ people paying for spots, visiting 5 different places to spend money there.

A well manged parking program doesn’t generate parking, it generates traffic for the businesses in the area.

Fair enough, honestly curious.

[d-usa]

No problem. Lots of places use parking purely to generate venue. Once a surface lot has your money they are happy, and parking garages are also happy to have long term customers. They want you to park.

The city, for the sake of increasing street traffic for people visiting businesses in the area, is more interested in making you leave so someone else can park on the street close to a business than they are in making profit from parking.

[Urbanized]

^^^^^^^^^
Just to add to the excellent explanation from d-usa, it’s worth pointing out that when the parking meter was invented - in OKC no less - its development was commissioned not by City government but instead by the Chamber and driven by downtown businesses, especially retailers. They were struggling because day parkers were tying up the convenient parking in front of their businesses and making it a pain for customers to come in and spend money.

It was never originally viewed as a revenue generation tool but instead as a parking management tool; it was intentionally designed to discourage day parking, and to move such use off of the street and into surface lots or later, garages.

[BBatesokc]

In support of d-usa's explanation, from a NewsOK article dated 1/8/2018, "Changes are intended to drive long-term parkers into garages, freeing up more on-street parking for short-term errands."

Additionally, "The new rate of $2 per hour for metered parking is expected to bring in $640,000 in additional annual revenue."