The Seattle Department of Transportation plans to replace all its parking pay stations between the summer of 2014 and the end of 2016 with new technology.
A one-month on-street trial will take place from February 14 to March 14, along Fourth Avenue between Stewart and Bell streets. There will be seven different models being tested, from four different vendors. During this time, SDOT invites the public to provide feedback regarding the aesthetics, ease of use and overall impression of each of the pay station models by completing a survey available online at http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/parking/newpaystations.htm.
New technology will provide a higher level of customer service and communications reliability, and will be better able to handle more complex parking rate programming requirements. It will also better integrate with other current and future parking management technologies and systems, from pay by phone to Seattle Police Parking Enforcement.
Seattle has approximately 2,200 parking pay stations that control paid parking for about 12,000 on-street parking spaces in Seattle. The oldest pay stations were first installed in 2004 and are coming to the end of their useful lives.