Kirstin Davis, 509.625.7773
Wednesday, March 4, 2020 at 10:29 a.m.
The City of Spokane is inviting citizens to interact with potential new parking meters and kiosks it is considering installing to manage paid on-street parking. There are over 37,500 parking spaces; of those, the City owns and operates 3,100 on-street spaces in the downtown area that take payment. Payment devices can be meters or kiosks. Some payment devices in Spokane do not take credit cards at all, as they are not connected to a network, and others are working on a soon to be obsolete, 2G network.
WHAT: Parking Petting Zoo – Public interaction with potential parking meters and kiosks
WHEN: Wednesday through Friday, March 4-6
8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
WHERE: City Hall – First Floor Lobby
WHEN: Saturday through Sunday, March 7-8
10 a.m. – 6 p.m. – Saturday
11 a.m. – 6 p.m. - Sunday
WHERE: River Park Square – First Floor Atrium
The Parking Petting Zoo is an opportunity for the public to come downtown and try out paid parking equipment the City is evaluating. “This is a unique and fun way for citizens to interact with the devices and provide feedback. Participants will be able to test coin, credit card and app payment options. The public is a stakeholder whose input is important to the City,” says Kris Becker, Director of Parking Services.
As part of the Downtown Parking Study, the City is replacing 800 devices working on a 2G network in 2020, as these devices will not be operable beyond 2020. The other devices while operable, also need replaced for a variety of reasons.
“Updated hardware and technology streamlines many manual processes and gives us the opportunity to move staff into other areas of maintaining the system. We expect maintenance, alerts, collecting, connectivity, ease and wayfinding all to improve with new payment devices,” adds Becker.
