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Smart meters in Uptown Athens [Anna Azallion | WOUB]

Athens City Council Considers New Technology for Smart Parking Meters

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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — The new smart parking meters that popped up around Uptown Athens last year might be here to stay.

Athens City Council is considering measures to keep the meters around for at least another five years and change the company that provides the technology Parking Enforcement Officers use. The company they have been working with since the early 2000s doesn’t provide hardware and software compatible with smart meters, according to council.

One complaint received about the smart meters is they are not compatible with the Park Mobile app to pay. But there is a similar app the city said users can use that most people don’t know about. said.

“If you download the Park Smarter app, it is a much more robust app because it works specifically with the meters,” City Councilmember Peter Kotses said. “You can go on there and you’ll actually see a map of which meters are occupied and are not in real-time.”

Park Smarter works similar to Park Mobile in that users can add their vehicle and credit card to the app so they don’t have to enter the information every time. The biggest difference with Park Smarter is that users have to input a meter number rather than a zone number.

The parking garage in Uptown Athens does not have the new smart parking meters. The garage has meters that allow people to pay with coins or via the Park Mobile app.
The parking garage in Uptown Athens does not have the new smart parking meters. The garage has meters that allow people to pay with coins or via the Park Mobile app. [Anna Azallion | WOUB]
The smart meters also have a slot for coins or a place to insert a credit or debit card. Users can then choose how much time they want to buy.

City Council is considering an ordinance to switch to a new company that would provide hardware and software for smart meters. This would reduce labor costs or allow for increased patrolling, Kotses said.

According to him, the new component would communicate with the meters so the parking enforcement officers can collect information faster.

The city has not adopted the smart meters universally, yet.

The meters in the parking garage aren’t the same as the meters throughout the rest of Uptown, meaning they can’t tell the parking enforcement officers if there’s a vehicle in a parking space. There’s also a slightly different protocol to patrol the parking garage since it still has the old meters, Kotses said.

Athens City Council will vote on the proposed ordinance at the next regular session meeting of City Council on Monday, March 16.

 

Anna Azallion is a student journalist working with WOUB’s Media Lab and Ohio University’s News at Noon production.