> Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards.

Unfortunately, a more accurate way of putting it is: stuff takes cards in lieu of coins. Like, where I live (also EU), ticket machines in buses and trams have gradually been upgraded over the past decade to accept cards, and then to accept only cards.

It's a ratchet. Hidden inflation striking again. Cashless is cheaper to maintain than cash-enabled, so it pretends to be a value-add at first, but quickly displaces the more expensive option. Same with apps, which again, are cheaper to maintain than actual payment-safe hardware.

It's near impossible to reverse this, because to do that, you have to successfully argue for increasing costs - especially that inflation quickly eats all the savings from the original change, so you'd be essentially arguing to make things more expensive than the baseline.

Place where I park my car for work (Gosford, Australia) just got rid of cash payment, they now take card payment only (apparently there is also going to be an app, but they haven’t launched it yet). I think the number one reason is they are upgrading to a new system, and the parking technology vendor doesn’t provide cash payments as a standard option-probably they could implement a custom integration to enable it if they thought it was essential, but cash payments are so rare, it would be a difficult decision to justify. The carpark is owned and operated by the local government, so they need to justify their decisions, either as commercially viable, or else as producing substantial public benefit, but I think both arguments would be difficult to sustain in this case.

no way will they go back to coin-operated. That would mean they have to pay employees to walk up and down to collect coins.

There are places in EU too where parking meters have disappeared and payments are only done through apps. And I am talking about public space in the street, not private parkings.

I parked in a garage in downtown Tacoma, Washington. The only option to pay was via an app. So I downloaded the app (by walking outside to where there was cell service, because I was, you know, underground in a garage) at which point it threw an internal server error when adding my card. There was no attendant on duty, and no way to pay with a credit card. So I left - just drove out of the garage. Then a few months later I got a fine for $75 for not paying. Then I called them to dispute it, and they offered to waive most of it, but it was still more than if I had been able to pay the fee initially.

I'm sure it was sold to the garage as a way to "maximize revenue and unlock operational efficiency". And sure enough, look, the revenue number is up and to the right. Working as designed.

Where I live, in the EU, we just have signs and the parking meters have been gone for several years

>Regina city council made the decision to remove the coin option at downtown meters as part of the budget deliberation process, said Faisal Kalim, the City of Regina's director of community standards.

I also live in EU. In Sweden. Most places don't even have parking meters anymore. You're just expected to use your phone.

And cashless is the default.

They are saying that things that have already been dumbed down can't go back. Obviously that's just their opinion, but I would guess that most people agree with them.

No because those cost more to maintain than the digital ones. Nobody is restoring the budget that got cut because the meters got cheaper.

I'm guessing it's a lot more expensive to install and maintain card readers than to essentially just have signs prompting people to use their phone.

You are confusing constraints of society with fucking corporate and government lunatics trying to control how we breathe