The new year should bring several parking-related changes for State College drivers, including new payment kiosks in the downtown and more aggressive enforcement of past-due tickets.
In addition, borough parking Manager Charles DeBow said, the municipality will soon receive a condition report on its Pugh Street parking garage. He said the 491-space facility, opened in 1971, probably has only seven years — at most — left in its useful life. The borough has begun preliminary conversations about how it might replace the structure, DeBow said.
More immediately, though, the borough is looking to install payment kiosks in its metered parking lots downtown. The kiosks, likely to arrive first in the West Beaver Avenue and South Allen Street lots, are expected to replace the conventional parking meters and improve convenience by enabling several payment methods, DeBow said.
He said they would accept cash, credit cards and smartphone-linked payments. Rather than feed conventional meters, motorists in the kiosk-equipped lots would pay at the kiosks.
Provided that the Borough Council approves a bid for kiosks, the first ones could be installed by summer, DeBow said. He said the units, to be accompanied by a public-education campaign, cost about $12,000 or $13,000 apiece. (The council-approved budget for 2012 designates $90,000 for kiosks, though not all of them may be installed during the calendar year.)
They will easily pay for themselves — and save the borough some money — over their seven-year lifespans, thanks to reduced maintenance expenses, DeBow said. The conventional meters that they’ll replace, he said, require labor-intensive repairs. Borough-wide, each day, 15 to 20 of them demand some kind of maintenance.
Among other changes anticipated in 2012, borough parking workers will begin using license-plate-recognition technology, probably by summer.
That addition, to cost some $60,000, also will hinge on council’s approval of a project bid. But the monies are already outlined in the approved borough budget for 2012.
Once it arrives, the the technology will allow borough workers to use vehicle-mounted cameras to scan parked cars’ license plates as they — the workers — cruise the streets.
That will make it easier for the borough to identify parking ‘scofflaws’ whose vehicles need to be booted, DeBow said. Right now, he said, parking employees identify the scofflaws only by chance, booting about 250 vehicles a year.
But 3,500 vehicles, according to parking-department data, are eligible to be booted in State College. (To be eligible for a boot, a vehicle must have at least five unpaid parking tickets that are at least 30 days old — or at least one parking ticket that’s advanced to the warrant stage of enforcement. It’s not clear how many of the 3,500 boot-eligible vehicles are regularly in State College.)
Initially, DeBow said, ‘I think people are going to see a lot of boots, and we’re going to get more compliance.’ He said the borough collects, on average, about $125 in late fees and fines each time a car is booted. (That doesn’t include court costs.)
But the goal of enhanced enforcement isn’t to generate revenue, borough officials have said. Rather, they have said, it’s meant to increase turnover in downtown parking spaces, to prevent a relative handful of motorists from monopolizing the short-term parking supply.
Motorists with more than seven annual meter offenses apiece account for 2.5 percent of overall parking violators in State College, but together they receive about 20 percent of all parking tickets issued by the borough, according to borough data.
The license-plate-recognition software is expected to simplify other processes for the borough parking office. Eventually, commuters who receive permits to park on borough streets will no longer need tangible passes; their license plates alone will prove that they’re permitted, DeBow said. Likewise, the technology will ease the monitoring of residents’ vehicles that are street-parked with short-term permissions. On that front, DeBow said, the upgrade should cut the number of parking tickets issued in error.
He said the borough is looking at how the technology may assist police, too, in identifying vehicles sought in criminal matters.
Also in 2012, DeBow said, he expects the possibility of later-evening parking-meter enforcement to be discussed anew in the downtown. No parking-price increases are planned during the calendar year, he said.
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