Boston is going to be installing solar powered parking meters. If that is not cool enough they also take credit cards, speak three languages, and still take normal coins (with the added fun of taking dollar bills now).
The only flaws I can see is that because of the ticket system used the meter will produce a waste stream, that’s all we need is more paper floating around the streets (I was similarly not impressed when Boston moved from a re-usable T coin to the current paper ones), and you will not be able to use the rest of the time on someones meter unless they give you their ticket.
Other than that however, these things are an idea that should have been implimented years ago.
From here
The city plans to begin installing solar-powered meters that take credit cards on a four-block section of Newbury Street in the Back Bay next week.
Officials hope the new meters will allow more parking spaces to fit along congested streets, as well as being more convenient.
“This is a new era in parking in Boston,” Thomas J. Timlin, Boston’s transportation commissioner, told The Boston Globe. “It is the biggest step since the city first purchased meters so long ago.”
But the new machines will still take cash: quarters, dollar bills and one-dollar coins. They also can be used in English, Spanish or French.
The 23 meters, which cover eight parking spots each, are the first step in a citywide upgrade. The machines will print out tickets with time stamps that drivers will place on their cars’ windshields.
Parking rates won’t change; each 15 minutes will still cost 25 cents and the time limit will still be two hours. And drivers won’t be able to use time someone else has left on the meter.
City workers won’t have quite as heavy a load to empty the machines, whose solar panels make them lower-maintenance. The city collects about 32 million quarters a year from the standard parking meters, about $8 million dollars worth.
From here.
They are powered by solar panels, eliminating the need for city workers to replace batteries. The new meters also have wireless communication devices that inform transportation workers of problems, reducing the risk of out-of-order meters. The city for years has struggled with disabled meters, with several hundred of the city’s 7,300 meters broken or vandalized at any given time.
Its a wonder more cities have not gotten on the solar power bandwagon for things like this. This is a perfect application for solar power, you have lots of small power loads that would make it hard to wire them to a central power system, it cuts down the cost of replacing batteries year after year, and its super low maintanence. Many cities and states have already moved over to solar powered street lights (another perfect match for solar), saving them lots of money on electricity. Lets hope this trend continues.