July 30, 2005

Parking kiosks - cash or credit card?

The pay-station kiosks, which spit out timed tickets to attach to windshields, accept either coins or cards -- but about 50 percent of the city's users now pay with plastic.


Source: Seattlepi.com

Drivers upset as parking kiosks reject plastic

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF

Some frustrated downtown drivers were scrounging for coins yesterday because of a computer glitch in Seattle's new parking pay stations.

They pulled up to pay, but found their plastic was worthless.

Tracy Krawczyk, parking policy and planning manager for the Seattle Transportation Department, said the intermittent disruption in credit-card processing occurred between 8 and 11 a.m. yesterday. "We had between 40 to 50 calls. Some callers were frustrated. Some were calling to report the problem."

The pay-station kiosks, which spit out timed tickets to attach to windshields, accept either coins or cards -- but about 50 percent of the city's users now pay with plastic.

The Seattle system averages more than 8,000 credit- and debit-card transactions a day.

The city began putting in pay stations in April 2004, with the goal of installing up to 1,600 kiosks covering up to 12,000 paid parking spaces over a three-year period.

Posted by keefner at July 30, 2005 03:34 PM