Parking Meter Meet Cell Phone

By Sean Corbett in News on Dec 15, 2006 9:46PM

Da Mare is looking out for you: Daley and the city have a bright vision for the future, a future where we can all pay for parking meters with our cell phones. City hall submitted an official “request for information” to potential contractors who could provide a pay-by-cell phone system for the city. These kinds of systems have been up and running for several years in other US cities and around the world.

The way it usually works: when a meter maid comes around to your car, the maid types your plate number into a BlackBerry before writing the ticket to see if you already paid for the meter over the phone. Our system however would require each driver to have an extra device sitting on his or her dashboard. The meter maid would only have to look at your dash to see how much time you’ve already paid for, thereby removing the need to outfit meter maids with BlackBerries. Chicagoist suspects this is a cost shifting measure employed by city hall to reduce its expenditure in deploying such a system to almost nothing.

The article doesn’t specify how the “beeper like device” will work (like where it gets its signal from) but we also see significant hacking potential if the proper checks and balances aren’t in place. Chicagoist applauds the idea overall and is preparing for the new payment system by digging out our old soldering iron.

Thanks to Kevin for the image