Playing with the parking meter

The other day I had a meeting in Downtown Miami. As usually I had to drive around for about 10 min. to find parking. I eventually found a public parking lot where they had parking. There was a 7 hours minimum restriction at $7 (that was kind of cheesy but hey, it's the Downtown).

I gloriously pulled out my card to pay. Swipe it Adrian! ... But my first two attempts were not successful. The card reader does not react at all. Is the magnetic band of card scratched? I did not think so ... I had actually just used the card at Walgreens and it worked fine (I mean one time even at Walgreens the clerk had to wrap my card in a plastic bag to make it work!) ...

All right, my third attempt is successful, I am adding time, I am paying and I am pushing nice metallic buttons attached to what it looks like a fairly modern digital display.

It is now about 15 min. later. I made it to Downtown at 9:30 AM and it's now 9:45 AM. I am actually only a block away from the building where I have my meeting. I am relaxed. My meeting does not start until 10:00 AM.

Next thing that happens the pretty display comes up with this message. "Payment successful. There is no need to print a receipt. However if you wish to do so, press OK." Neat, I am thinking. So they have my plate # in their database (cause I had just inserted it) and the transaction confirmation. I should be good to go. I am sure the guy who patrols the parking plots is sophisticated enough to make the right determination. He won't give me a ticket.

But, somehow, I am still at unease. What if he is not? What if he/she will screw up like it happens many times and then I have to waste half a day to dispute a $18 ticket (cause you know I will; I don't like to pay for parking twice). Well, let's print out this ticket anyways.

I pushed OK. In about 20 other seconds, the receipt got printed out. I am picking up the receipt, going back to my car and proudly displaying my receipt in my windshield.

It is now 10 to 10 and I am happily leaving the parking lot. At 5 to 10 I am checked in by their receptionist. I made it on time for my meeting.

But I kind of burned a good 20-25 minutes looking for parking spots, parking, paying and printing receipts. Good thing I left half hour earlier than I should have left.

Now you guys tell me. Is this an efficient way of parking and making parking payments? Do all these help you out with your daily stress? (it's like we did not have enough of that)

The following scenario immediately comes up in my mind.

Let's cut our losses short. Let's do something like this.

I drive to Downtown and I make it there. As soon as I get into the closest "parking zone" to the building where I am going, my smartphone starts searching for available parking spots. In less than 10 seconds, it locates the closest available spot. It hooks those coordinates up to my GPS-es driving directions and it shows me where to go. I make it there in less than a minute. I pull in. I park. I get out of the car and head to the parking meter. I pull up my meter paying app, I push *one* button and I pay for parking. The meter's display gets automatically updates with my car's plate info because I am already in their database. I am out of there confident in one minute and thirty seconds.

Is this SciFi? Not at all. Our company can actually develop a technology like this. It would save people tremendous amount of time and headaches. And it will eliminate human errors while enforcing parking.

Is there infrastructure that needs to be build for this? Yes, it is. Are there software development services that need to be employed for this? I bet it is. But the most important thing for something like this is to have the desire to do it.

Hello ladies and gentleman at the City of Miami? Did you hear that?

Make it a great day!

Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com