City To Buy Parking Meters That Work

Drivers may soon uncover new routes to pay for parking in New Haven — as the city looks into buying 1,400 new meters and 50 new kiosks with capacity to accept card taps and Apple Pay rather than just inserted credit cards and coins.

The Board of Alders Finance Committee voted unanimously during its latest meeting Tuesday night to recommend spending $1.1 million to repair and replace parking meters across the city.

Of the $1.1 million requested, $780,000 will go towards buying 1,400 new single-space meters and $325,000 will pay for 50 kiosks covering around 400 parking spots. 

These proposed new purchases will replace existing meters and kiosks, and will not expand the city’s current network of paid street parking.

Officials said about $800,000 of that money will come from the city’s capital budget, and $300,000 from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds.

The proposal now heads to the full Board of Alders for further review and a final vote.

“We get calls about the meters — that they don’t work, they’re not functional, they took my money and I didn’t see a time, they didn’t turn green… or I stuck my credit card in and the meter ate it, it’s not accepting coins, the signal on this one is a little fuzzy,” city Parking Enforcement Supervisor Velisha Cloud reported during Tuesday’s hearing. 

Buying new meters, she said, will not only mean fewer defective machines — but more ways for people to avoid contact with meters altogether while still paying their parking dues, depending on the technology the city ultimately chooses to adopt.

Eric Hoffman and Bijan Notghi, who are department deputy directors with the city’s transportation, traffic and parking division, said New Haven has a total of 3,000 metered parking spaces. The city also has at least 1,800 meters — including both single-space meters and multi-space kiosks — that are either approaching end-of-life or have surpassed obsolescence. 

That’s because 960 of the city’s 2,700 meters (which includes multi-space kiosks) will no longer be serviceable come January as wireless carriers shut down their 2G and 3G networks, which the meters use to read credit cards and transmit data to a common web portal.

In fact, AT&T, T‑Mobile, and Verizon have already shut down those networks. The only reason those 960 meters are still functioning, Hoffman told the Independent following Wednesday’s meeting, is because ​“somebody in the area is probably still using a legacy 2G tower.”

IPS Group, Inc., the company which manufactures and sells the majority of meters owned by New Haven, is now discontinuing production of parts and support services for their MK3 meter model, which uses 3G, and directing clients to purchase other models, such as the MK5, which work with 4G technology.

Notghi said that IPS told their department six months ago that needed meter parts and tech support for the MK3s would be phased out by the end of 2023. Notghi’s team is now looking to buy 1,400 of the so-called MK5 ​“smart meters” and 50 more kiosks to replace around two-thirds of the city’s out-of-date devices.

In other words, those 960 MK3 meters owned by the city will soon be replaced with MK5s from the same company. The kiosks, of which extant models have already been manually upgraded to work with 4G, will be purchased from a different company known as Flowbird.

Right now, the city owns 1,900 single-space meters sourced from IPS. Just under 1,000 are MK5s. If and when the city buys more of those MK5s, they will also have the decision to purchase additional upgrades to those new meters which allow for contactless payment options, including card tapping and both Apple and Google Pay. The city’s current MK5s do not permit contactless payments.

Notghi acknowledged that upgrade option after Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers inquired as to whether a new meter model would accept Apple Pay. Hoffman later told the Independent that contactless payment capacity will impose an additional fee on top of the cost amount already requested by his department from the board, an amount which he has yet to calculate. The alders have yet to debate the costs and benefits of investing in diversifying parking payment methods.

The idea is to get approval from the Board of Alders by mid-November, purchase the products for delivery by December, and install the new meters by mid-February. 

In Fiscal Year 2022 – 23 (FY23), which ended on June 30, the city took in $3.9 million in total from parking revenue, including $1.1 million from card payments to meters and kiosks, $2.1 million from mobile pay apps, and $680,000 from coins and parking vouchers. 

On Tuesday, Westville/Amity Alder and Majority Leader Richard Furlow asked how much revenue the city would estimate it has lost due to the meters’ mass incompatibility with 4G technology.

“They’re still functioning, they’re still collecting, so there has not been any direct impact on any large scale,” Hoffman said. Rather, most meters that are defective are suffering hardware issues because the majority of meters are over ten years old and near the end of their lifespan.

In addition to contactless payment capacity, Furlow further asked whether new meters might be capable of sensing when cars pull away and reset themselves. That could potentially increase revenue by eliminating payment carry-over from one parker to the next.

Notghi said the city tried that technology out with some of their meters just five years prior, but the sensors were often inaccurate and caused more problems than positives.

“I’m not recommending it,” Furlow clarified, ​“because Bridgeport did it and it was a disaster.”

“What do we do about broken meters?” East Rock Alder Anna Festa wondered. ​“People do park at them.” Are people ticketed for non-payment at a defective meter and are those tickets included in revenue projections?

Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli said that parking tickets are considered separate from meter revenue. ​“It’s much better when it’s collected on the meter side rather than the ticket side,” he said, ​“it leads to frustration on the customer’s part.”

When someone complains about getting ticketed at a broken meter, Parking Enforcement Supervisor Velisha Cloud said that ​“right away we tell them to appeal their ticket.”

“It’s against city ordinance to park at a broken meter” she said. ​“But nine times out of 10, it’s okay.”