It should have been put coins in a slot.

bigstrat2003 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Or use your card on the machine. We had that for a while, but then these stupid parking companies started to get traction.

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mikepurvis a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, just a plain tap-to-pay on the meter itself (or a nearby kiosk) is the obvious solution. I think doing it on the meter is awkward because then they all need to be online, so you're either dealing with individual M2M cards or some kind of local mesh network, not to mention powering them all. The kiosk is another thing to have to install and maintain and power. And doing a plain tap would have no way of inputting how long you wanted to pay for.

All that to say, I can fully understand how we ended up with "here's a sticker with a number on it, pay on your phone"; it's just, the pay on your phone option should be a one step apple/google pay webpage where you at most have to enter your license plate, and it certainly should not be collecting credit card details within the app.

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inigyou a day ago | parent [-]

And what if I don't use Apple Pay or Google Pay?

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brewdad 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Enter a credit/debit card number then. They are under zero obligation to allow you a cash payment method.

	▲	inigyou 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well they should be. The government should be obligated to support the use of government services without any third-party megacorp dependencies.

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mikepurvis a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Ehh maybe. I mean, it was a three hour show and I don't carry coins any more. So that would have been ATM -> go to a store and break a twenty -> put in a few bucks -> remember to go out at intermission and put in more money.

Paying by phone is a step up from that old world; I just want it to be one tap, not a whole sequence that tries to upsell me on a monthly pass or establishing an in-app "parking wallet" or whatever.

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inigyou a day ago | parent [-]

Not carrying coins is your own fault, not the system's. You can't refuse the analog solutions and then complain the digital ones are too digital.

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mikepurvis a day ago | parent | next [-]

I guess, but no one carries coins, and the machine doesn't accept them. Me not having coins changed nothing about this situation.

	▲	inigyou a day ago \| parent [-]
		You not having coins is one half of the problem. We can't pretend we don't tolerate the abuses of the digital money system, while not carrying analog money - it's completely hypocritical.

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stackghost a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Digital solutions don't have to be abusive.

Where I live the city commissioned its own mobile app for parking, and all numbered parking spots in the city use that app.

There are private lots that use Honk or Robbins or whatever, but the municipal lots and all parallel parking spaces downtown all use the same single app and the revenue goes to the city.

The city parking app works reasonably well, no ads, it just does one thing. If you leave early you open the app and hit "stop parking" and it only charges you the 37 cents or whatever that you actually consumed. It sends you a push notification when your parking is about to expire. And if you don't like the app for whatever reason, you can still pay with a card at the pay machines on every block. It's unglamorous, but it's fantastic technology.

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mikepurvis a day ago | parent | next [-]

That seems reasonable. The kiosk is still there to pay with cards or cash directly, but the app/website lets you skip that, avoid printing a slip, maybe buy a pass or something.

The risk is mainly that down the road someone looks at the usage numbers and goes hmm, well the kiosk is only getting used 5% of the time, let's just discontinue supporting it.

	▲	inigyou 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The other risk is that they make it cheaper via the app/website, maybe by offering a pass or something. Then that's effectively discrimination against people who don't have a big tech phone.

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inigyou a day ago | parent | prev [-]

That's still one more app, that's not any better if the problem is needing an app.

	▲	stackghost a day ago \| parent [-]
		See my edits. You don't need the app but the experience is strictly better with it. One of the rare cases where the app is value add.