By Staff
April 27, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
Less than two weeks to use these guys. You might want to do a selfie with on of them
There will be 77 of them on the streets and another 25 located in city parking lots – they are there to collect parking money from you.
There will be two at Spencer’s waterfront (one for the east lot and one for the west lot) and another at the municipal garage located on Locust St.
Here is a map of the parking lots throughout the city.
The meters will be spaced out on the streets – requiring a short short walk to the meter.
They are being installed around the city now and will be operational on May 12th, when the city is going to do a formal launch.
This is the face of the machine that will collect your parking fee. It doesn’t talk to you – but it does tell the enforcement officers that you are in a parking spot. Powered by a solar cell on the top.
The parking meters, manufactured in France are part of a contract the city has with Precise ParkLink, a leader in the Canadian parking industry; they’ve been around for twenty-five years.
Burlington will be working with Precise ParkLink in updating the city’s parking system to include Pay by License Plate and Cell Phone Parking technology.
There are four rate zones throughout the city. You will use the zone number clearly marked on the meter when you use your cell phone to pay for parking.
Here is how the two technologies involved work:
Instructions to register are printed on the front of the machine – probably better to register on-line. You can to that today.
Pay by Cell is a convenient way to pay for parking but a person has to sign up and create an account using a valid credit card
Precise ParkLink is a PCI Level One credit card processor (means they can be trusted) so your credit card and license plate information is secure. Here is a link to understand how secure payments work.
The contract with Precise ParkLink is for five years – to date the city has invested approximately $500,000 in new pay stations.
It’s really easy to register for Pay by Cell.
People can go on line and register their license plate and provide their credit card data at www.telepark.ca today if they want. You won’t be able to actually pay for parking until the launch on May 12th.
The best part of Pay by Cell is that once the account is set up a parker starts their parking session by entering the zone they are parking in – in order to stop the charges to your credit card you have to use your cell phone to tell the service that you are no longer in the parking spot – you can’t just drive away.
To register your TelePark cell phone parking account please visit (www.telepark.ca/en/).
To pay by license plate all you do is walk up to the parking meter, enter the license plate and pay. The digital screen on the parking meter will prompt the parker through the process.
Pretty simple. That doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be any complaints.
There are also written instructions on the parking meter. Helpful hint: Remember your license plate – you need it to use the service. – WE SUGGEST YOU USE YOUR CELL & TAKE & STORE A PICTURE OF THE LICENSE PLATES REGISTERED!
The City’s Parking Enforcement unit will receive REAL TIME information about your parking session. They will see that you have paid for your parking and they will know that parking for the vehicle with the license plate keyed in has paid for the parking. They will also know when the parking is going to expire.
They aren’t quite as tall as they appear – and it will take a little bit to get used to them. 77 of them are going up – replacing 300 of the older meters.
Enforcement officers will still patrol – all they have to do is enter the licence plate number into their hand held unit which gives instant responses to validate parking payment and/or permit.
The city has a three hour maximum parking by law on city streets with parking meters, so you will have to move you Garage, surface lots, On Street spaces, and Waterfront (Spencer Smith) lots vehicle to another zone after three hours.
The four zones are the garage on Locust, surface lots, On Street spaces, and the Waterfront (Spencer Smith) lots. Each parking meter has its zone clearly marked. It is going to take a little getting used to – wait for the complaints to come in.
The new machines really shouldn’t be that difficult to use. Put in your credit card or coins, or use your phone, type in your plate number and be on your way. Since I’ve gotten my “tap” debit card, I no longer carry coins or cash of any kind, and I’m sure I’m not alone. Why on earth would a modernized parking payment system put stores out of business? Good grief. Is there any evidence of this happening anywhere? I doubt it. All these machines are doing is giving visitors to the downtown more choice about how they pay. More choice/convenience should translate into a higher rate of payment and maybe even more customers for downtown businesses.
That said, I wasn’t entirely thrilled to come home from work this week to find a big slab of concrete poured on my front lawn, but hey, these machines need to go somewhere I guess. We’ll all be just fine.
Feeding a meter with pocket change has worked just fine for decades, and now just because of the freakin cellphone, Taxpayers are on the hook for $500k, in the name of convenience?
No Monte…you are not the only one to see the irony. This City is really spending money in some of the wrong places. Again, this should be something that we should have all voted on…a tax payers’ online referendum.
I notice that the the meters are manufactured in France.
Meanwhile Burlington is looking for and attempting to attract business and manufacturing jobs here.
Am I the only one to see the irony in all of this ?
We don’t create jobs here by purchasing items out of the country. What’s wrong folks?
Looks like far too a complicated system to use anyway, so it will probably be avoided.
Parking should not be that complicated.
Well this is sure to put more downtown business – out of business. Who wants to fight for 10 minutes with a parking meter? People will just go elsewhere.