To a driver, it’s a lucky feeling to pull in to a parking space that still has some time remaining on the meter before the red “violation” flag pops up.
To Chicago officials, it’s not lucky at all. It represents a lost opportunity to collect additional money.
Although such an attitude might seem like pinching pennies — or quarters — city officials are serious. So serious that they are hopeful a pilot project testing a new in-car parking-payment device will help ensure that everyone who parks also pays each and every time.
“We call it ‘piggybacking at the meter,’ ” said Bea Reyna-Hickey, the city’s revenue director, referring to drivers who benefit from the leftover parking time purchased by the motorists who used the spaces before them. “Think of the countless thousands of dollars lost” every year at the city’s approximately 33,000 parking meters, she said.
Potential revenue to city coffers also goes uncollected, Reyna-Hickey said, when drivers who do not have coins to feed expired meters park there anyway, and thanks to a benevolent parking god, are not ticketed by police or the city’s seemingly ubiquitous meter matrons.
Physically plugging parking meters with coins may someday become the exception to the rule if the city’s fledgling experiment with the in-car ParkMagic automated parking meter catches on.
Drivers with a ParkMagic meter face the same initial challenge as any other motorist — finding an available metered parking space. Once the vehicle is parked, the driver uses the cell phone registered to the account to call a toll-free phone number. Users must enter the parking zone number on the meter and then designate the amount of time needed.
A confirmation text message is sent to the device, and the parking fee is deducted from the balance in the account.
The confirmation shows the date, the parking zone and the time the parking will expire. A light on the pager-size device flashes green when parking has been paid for and red when time has expired. Drivers can call back from any location using the registered cell phone and pay more if extra time is needed.
The ParkMagic device must be placed in the driver’s side windshield so police and other parking-enforcement personnel can check to see whether the vehicle is legally parked. A decal must also be placed in the rear window to help authorities more easily spot vehicles using the technology.
The city has sold more than 500 of the gadgets since they went on sale Oct. 4, according to the Chicago Department of Revenue. Officials hope to sell 1,000 units during the roughly six-month pilot test.
The devices can be purchased for $15 at City Hall or online at www.parkmagicchicago.com. Customers must open an account and provide a credit card and a cell phone number. The $15 fee is applied to future parking payments at city meters or at parking spaces near pay-and-display boxes.
You park, you pay
The display on the actual parking meter at the space is not part of the transaction, so there is no way for the next driver who comes along to piggyback on the money paid by a ParkMagic customer.
