Los Angeles Moves to Credit Card Readers and On-Street Sensors
By John Van Horn
“It will be near-field communication or in-car transpon- ders. On-street technology has not stopped evolving,”
said Amir Sedadi when asked about the future in a conversation he had last month with ParkingToday. Sedadi is Assistant Gen- eral Manager for the city of Los Angeles Office of Parking Man- agement, Planning and Regulations. PT sat down with Sedadi and his staff to review what is
going on parking-wise in the nation’s second-largest city. The conversation was wide-ranging. His summary words above held a sense that parking has a
way to go, but that’s no reason to stop and wait. “If you do that, you never will do anything,” he said. “We found ourselves in an interesting position a few years
ago.We knew we needed to update our method of on-street rev- enue collection. We had done studies with pay-by-space, pay- and-display and single-space meters. The main criteria had to be that they would accept credit cards and would work reliably. “Our rates were going up, and a coin-only option didn’t
solve our problem,” Sedadi said. “Our existing meters were in a sad state of repair.We had to make a change. “At the same time, the city was looking at a public-private
partnership (PPP), much as was done in Chicago.We were in a position of having to make a decision, but we didn’t want to com- mit potential bidders on the PPP. “Leasing the card/coin single-space meters was the most
expeditious and smart decision,” Sedadi said.“We could upgrade our meters easily and quickly. There was no need to remove the existing posts. “We could solve the customer service problems we were see-
ing with our older equipment and realize an increase in revenue. If the city decided to proceed with the on-street PPP, the compa- ny could work the lease costs into its bid. “The decision made itself,” Sedadi said. His staff received City Council approval, and in May 2010,
the city of LA entered into a three-year lease-to-own program with San Diego-based IPS Group. The lease program allows the city to pay IPS with the increased revenue generated by the new meters, rather than having a large initial outlay of capital. The city expected a yearly net increase of $3 million based on only six months of use. The LA Transportation Department has now completed
replacement of the old meters with approximately 24,000 card/coin meters. “Meter revenue is up by an average of 50% where the new
meters were installed, and that’s without changing any rates or hours,” said Dan Mitchell, Senior Transportation Engineer. “We were losing so much revenue due to meters being out of service. Nowwehave the meters up and running more than 99% of the time. “With the meters nearly always working and enforceable, cita-
tions at the new meters were up 15%,” Mitchell said (see sidebar). “In some cases,” added Sedadi, “we used pay-by-space equipment [Duncan and Digital pay stations]. This is primarily in Continued on Page 38
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LA 1 Technician changes out a broken meter. The new meters installed in LA notify the technician in the field by a text message that they have a problem and the technician responds, often within half an hour.
Meter Broken, You Can’t Park Before the new meters were installed, drivers in Los
Angeles could park at a broken meter without worry of a citation. It often could take days to get the meter repaired because the city had to rely on either citizens reporting the broken meter or a report from a patrol officer. When the new meters went in, the rules changed. Due
to the extremely high “up” time, the city now requires pay- ment at the new meters. If the coin mechanism doesn’t work, the person must use a credit card, and vice versa. If both fail, they may not park at the meter. This is clearly explained on the meter. When there is a problem, the individual meter is able
to send a text message via the wireless network directly to technicians. The repair team can target only the mecha- nisms that need repairs, and if the meter cannot be repaired on-site, then the mechanism can be exchanged and taken back to be repaired. The parking space has little or no downtime. Thanks to the limited downtime, the multiple forms of
payment (credit cards now account for approximately one- third of all meter revenue received by the city), and the ease of use by the customer, Los Angeles has seen a 75% reduction in contested meter citations and a 50% drop in complaints to the city’s meter hotline. Parking customers want to pay and now have multi-
ple ways of accomplishing that, meaning that only the true scofflaws will try to beat the system. – JVH
Parking Today
www.parkingtoday.com
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