random pieces

tbridge:

rartastic replied to your photo: Meters (Taken with instagram)

How do the parking meter checkers know that you’ve paid if you pay with your phone?

Great question. They’ve got hand-held machines to produce the tickets, and they’re supposed to check your license plate against…

What bums me out (but doesn’t really surprise me) is that the mobile app has gone from letting you start and stop a parking session to forcing you to pick an amount of time. It’s akin to guessing how many quarters you need to drop into the meter.

Granted, it’s more convenient to recharge your meter by phone than by running out to the meter, but the old way saved you from having to remember this step and eliminated overpaying for unused time… which is probably why phone payment now mirrors the old prepay method.