By Pepper Parr
May 10th, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
Well – it is official – with more people than is usually required to get a car out of a ditch, the $500,000 parking meter system went into use officially on Monday.
Looks like half of the Transportation department + a good portion of the city’s communications team was needed to launch the new parking meters. It took three different Requests for Proposals to get this project to the finish line.
Luigi Lato , Chief Operating Officer, Precise ParkLink said he was honoured to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony, expressing that he is “overjoyed with the city’s excitement to introduce Precise ParkLink’s Pay-By-Plate parking technology. The residents will enjoy the upgraded parking system which brings Burlington on par with other global cities that use the Parkeon Pay-By-Plate parking meters and TelePark Pay-By-Cell option”.
So much for that!
The system is being paid for with funds that were in a reserve fund that is the levy the city places on commercial establishments in the downtown core. Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward explained that the taxpayers were not the people paying for the system.
The difference for regular parking is – making sure you remember the license number of the car you are parking.
You can use cash or credit card. You will also be able to use your cell phone to pay for your parking. Referred to as TelePark, it is a service that you have to register for – something you do one line. W will explain this in more detail in a follow up article.
During the launch ceremonies IT staff did say there were some hiccup getting the back end of the system to work – it has to interact with the credit card organizations on a network that has the highest possible security.
Expect to see people with PAYBYPL8 walking the downtown core looking for perplexed citizens wanting to pay for their parking. They are Parking Ambassadors – there to help!
The city will go into a full court press media mode explaining how the system works and will have people on the street – they are being called “Parking Ambassadors” walking around the downtown core to answer questions.
An additional feature is the ability of commercial operations to pay for the parking of their customers should they choose to do so. The take up on that opportunity doesn’t look all that promising at this point but as Mary Shepherd explained “these things take time for people to understand and then implement.”
Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward handling the cash part of the old parking meter with Downtown Business Association president Brian Dean. He is the one who is going to have to herd his members into taking on the feature that will let his members pay for client parking. Good luck Brian.
The public hasn’t been jumping for joy. Michael Jones points out that these machines are in Hamilton and are not very user friendly – also if you have leftover time on your ticket you can’t share that with anyone. He adds: “ say goodbye to the great feeling of pulling up and seeing 20 minutes left on the previous parker’s meter …felt like winning a mini lottery”.
Some of the posts that held the old parking meters are being re-purposed and will become bicycle racks.
It will be very interesting because they will receive thousands of phone calls as the web site lists the customer service number and if you call them…they can’t answer ANY questions they only are allowed to give you some email address. I already tried creating an online profile and was stumped by the first question: Parkcard code???? Also, what is the MAXIMUM charge???…many will not want to include their credit card information…believe I’m in the same boat and weren’t these machines made in France??? why are not supporting a Canadian company?
The system is being paid for with funds that were in a reserve fund that is the levy the city places on commercial establishments in the downtown core. Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward explained that the taxpayers were not the people paying for the system.
Is there someone on city staff that can explain to Councillor Meed Ward that the levy place on downtown commercial establishments is paid by taxpayers who own the establishments. That tax is simply passed on to patrons, who are also taxpayers, in the price of goods or services.
It’s rely a simple concept, all revenue for the city is a tax, paid by taxpayers.
“The residents will enjoy the upgraded parking system” – ya residents can already enjoy free parking in easy range of their cars. The “levy the city places on commercial establishments in the downtown core” should be used for free 3 hour parking in the core day and night no exceptions. Longer than 3 hours charing is fine. You are setting up a commercial environment where only large big box stores can win. This is no way to support walkability the down town core or anything. It’s just an an extra brick tied to down town merchants trying to keep their head above water.