State College is trying changes to downtown street meter time limits and enforcement to address what borough officials say is a growing issue of meter feeding in violation of the parking code.
Borough Council on Monday approved a pilot program to extend 90-minute meters — which constitute most of the downtown street meters — to two hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but to enforce the limit and prevent drivers from extending their parking time through the ParkMobile payment app.
As in many municipalities, meter feeding — or paying for more time beyond the allowed limit — is a parking violation, because the borough wants to encourage regular turnover of on-street spaces and use of garages and lots for longer-term parking. The regulation “has not been enforced for decades,” Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said, but the advent of the mobile payment app has made it easy for drivers to spend hours beyond the posted time limit in one space.
Tom Brown, borough parking director, said during a discussion of the changes on July 14 that the issue “has really become somewhat problematic as mobile pay has gotten more and more popular.”
“We’re getting a lot more people that are sitting at the meters all day and just feeding it through ParkMobile,” Brown said. “We want to be able to enforce that and stop that practice and try and encourage people that are spending all day downtown to utilize longer-term lots or facilities.”
When time expires on two-hour meters, ParkMobile users will no longer have the option to add more time. Parking staff will also enforce meter feeding for those who pay at the meter when they observe a violation, but Fountaine and Brown indicated the primary issue is with adding time on the mobile app.
“When you were just putting coins in, some people would run out and put coins in, but many people wouldn’t,” Fountaine said. “But with the mobile payment, it’s now pretty easy to pay all day long. And so we were looking at enforcing that to encourage turnover of parking.”
Fountaine added that it appears largely to be employees of downtown businesses and Penn State who most frequently feed meters for an extended period of time.
“It’s employees that work on both sides of College Avenue who can sit in an office somewhere with a mobile app right now and it just takes up space all day long,” Fountaine said. “So really it’s intended to help turn those cars over. It’s a trial to see if it in fact is effective and works in a way that does allow enough time to shop and eat lunch and eat dinner and do the things that you want to encourage downtown, but to be able to really judge whether it’s an effective means of controlling that to turn cars over and make sure those meters are available.”
Mayor Ezra Nanes said someone could just move their vehicle to another spot on the same block. Council member John Hayes said he did not view that as a problem because it would still be turn over of spaces, and Fountaine noted that drivers are less likely to repeatedly move their vehicles a short distance.
“That is exactly the purpose of parking meters is to make sure parking spaces turn over and that there’s always parking available for people who are coming downtown to support retail businesses and restaurants downtown,” Fountaine said.
Changing 90 minutes to two hours was arrived at in consultation with the Downtown State College Improvement District and its Retail Advisory Committee to give those visiting downtown businesses during the day more time to do so. After 5 p.m. until enforcement ends at 10 p.m., those meters are available for a maximum of three hours “to allow people to go to dinner and do things downtown without having to worry about paying for the additional time or getting a ticket for parking too long,” Fountaine said.
Communications from the borough and DSCID, as well as on the ParkMobile app, will be used to inform drivers of the change, and messages are on digital signs in the garages about the availability of monthly permits.
Brown also said he expects parking staff will issue warnings for the first few weeks. Responding to a question from Nanes about accommodating people who encounter urgent situations and need to extend their parking time, Fountaine said that many times in those circumstances the parking office will forgive a ticket for someone who does not have a history of appeals.
The pilot program will be in effect throughout the rest of 2025, and in January Borough Council will review the results to determine if it should continue on a permanent basis.
“I’d love to see some data at the end of this trial on how often we have at least one open space on each of our major streets, because that’s kind of the goal, to always have at least one open space so when someone wants to go to a business, there’s a space for them,” council member Matt Herndon said. “And so hopefully this will do it. If not, you know, I’d like to review then to see what other actions we might take, whether it’s an increase in parking pricing for street meters or some other action to help ensure that goal is met.
“My hope is that this itself will deliver more open parking spots directly in front of our businesses for people who want to patronize them while still offering longer parking in our lots and our decks for those who want to stay downtown longer.”
Council President Evan Myers said he is in favor of trying different methods to address the issue if the pilot program isn’t effective, such as charging more to extend time beyond the limit.
“I think this a good step to do this pilot program,” Myers said. “We need to try different things and I think we should approach it in that way, that this may work or it may not work, but there’s all kinds of different ways of doing things.”
