New parking meters go online downtown

A few months after the city approved a contract for fancy WiFi-connected parking meters downtown, the first of the new meters have gone online — and though there are still some kinks to work out, things seem to be going fairly smoothly. You might have seen the new meters along Travis Street or near the City Hall Annex — they're tall, grayish and topped by solar panels. The big deal with the meters isn't how they look, though; it's that they accept bills and credit cards in addition to coins, and eventually, you'll even be able to pay using your cell phone. But not quite yet.

So far, the city's focus has been on teaching people to use the new meters: Parking enforcement officers have been wandering around downtown giving tips, and the limited rollout of the new machines has helped ensure things won't get too backed up. "We're kind of in a test mode now," Liliana Rambo, assistant director for parking management, told the Chronicle. "We need to give ourselves some room to breathe in case things don't go as well as anticipated." Parking officer Juanita Valdez said most people seem to be doing OK with the new meters, though several have complained that you can't buy more time on them by just adding coins — instead, you have to buy a new ticket (when you buy time on the meters, they print a ticket that you display on your car's dashboard). So if you don't time it right, you may end up with two overlapping tickets, which means you're paying twice for some amount of time at the meter. "You lose too much money," Shirley Murkin, a courier, told the Chron.

Despite that, the meters have some features we like: They won't accept payment at times when parking isn't allowed, and when they malfunction, they automatically call the city for help. The meters are also the first things to use the WiFi network being installed downtown, which will supposedly one day lead to a citywide WiFi network. Check the city's page here for more info on the new parking meter project.