Comments on: San Francisco’s secret parking card

By: BertandErnie

BertandErnie — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:25:59 +0000

This card is great!!! I found other great parking tips at http://www.findingthesweetspot.com Little known stuff that the Department of parking Traffic Knows and you may not. Like when you can park in white-zones, yellow zones…how to find parking when nobody else can. Totally cool.

By: luciano

luciano — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:11:27 +0000

each time I need to park outside my blu lines I pay with money … (torino, italy) … no cards here

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:36:54 +0000

My city (Pittsburgh, PA) also has credit-card readers available on the machines — very convenient!

By: Paulius

Paulius — Sun, 27 May 2007 16:11:05 +0000

Hihi all Europe is using that type of cards for many years including Public Phone. I have a feeling Americans discover this new technology just now :-)

By: clover

clover — Sun, 20 May 2007 22:15:25 +0000

Like Portland, Seattle went one better and just made the parking meters credit card-friendly.

By: DKF

DKF — Wed, 16 May 2007 19:57:13 +0000

We have a system in DC similar to the one in Portland. Not sure if you use a credit card to pay. It is in the downtown area and there seems to be one pay machine per block. How I found out was someone was coming out of a parking space and had time on their slip and they gave their slip to me to place in my window. (Ours does not stick to the window just set it on the dash.) When I left out I gave it to the next person to use. I thought that was really nice.

By: lgbtech

lgbtech — Tue, 15 May 2007 16:32:23 +0000

I live in Albany, NY. We have something similar to the parking card, called a CaskKey. It is shaped like a key so you can hang it on you keyring with your car key. You insert the key in a special slot on the meter to pay for your parking. There are some downsides to it. It is not a "smart" key. You have to decide in advance how much time you want to pay for, rather than starting the meter when you park and stopping it when you return. It is refillable, but you have to go to the City's parking authority office to refill it which is a pain (although you can pay for your refill on their website, which does make things go more quickly).

By: jim

jim — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:29:23 +0000

west palm beach has parking cards, even available for business to custom imprint. BUT more importantly, the city rolled out a new program where you pay for your parking meters via cell phone. Yup, just dial the number on the meter, follow the prompts, and it shows up on your cell phone bill.

doesn't get easier than that!

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:04:26 +0000

In Portland, Oregon you can just pay with a credit card, which I prefer since I don’t really want to add another card to my wallet to carry around, or have to deal with credits when I’m not using it very often. The downside to this is that the meter prints out a small piece of paper you stick to your window which says when your time expires. It’s incredibly wasteful, leaves nasty residue on your window if you use them daily, creates garbage in your car when you’re done with them, and makes you walk from your car to the one “meter” per block, stand in the rain while it prints your slip, then walk back to your car to put it in the window. Usually only takes about 60 seconds round trip, but for the disabled, this would be a huge inconvenience. Also, this is Oregon, where it rains 9 months of the year, so it can get annoying standing in the rain longer than necessary. HOWEVER, we can pay with credit cards, which means I never have to worry about coins at all…

By: Maaike

Maaike — Thu, 10 May 2007 18:56:13 +0000

In many cities here in The Netherlands you can pay by telephone. You have to dial a certain number when you park your car and dial it again when you leave. Very convenient :-)