The Brave New World of Parking Meters

West Hollywood has the key to the parking space of the future.

Offering a glimpse of what parking may be like in a cashless 21st Century, the trendy city has installed high-tech parking meters where a key can be used in lieu of a quarter.

The Westside already has talking parking meters. And Los Angeles is planning to provide a pocket-sized personal parking meter to delivery trucks.

The computer-age equipment in West Hollywood, first used in Hong Kong, features a digital mechanism in place of the familiar mechanical red flag that pops up when time has expired.

Although motorists can pay the old-fashioned way--by depositing nickels, dimes or quarters--there is no handle to crank. And they also can buy a key, good for a certain number of parking hours.

Some folks making a quick stop to pick up a caffe latte have tried to figure out why there are holes in the meters. It’s a keyhole: Each time the key is inserted, you get 20 minutes of parking time. The keys, which have computer chips in them, can be bought in increments of $10 to $100, then decrease in value each time they are used. You bring them back to the city to “recharge” them.

“It’s hard enough to find parking in this city. The last thing you want to do is fumble around for change and find out you don’t have any,” said Donald Korotsky, a West Hollywood transportation engineer who learned about the parking meters at a trade show. “It makes life easier.”

Dean Whitehead, who operates a coffeehouse on Santa Monica Boulevard, was the first person to buy a key from the city.

“They’re an incredible timesaver,” he said, adding that the keys also draw strange looks from passersby. “They look at me like I own the parking meter.”

In other areas of the Westside, when people drop in their change, the meters pipe up with spoken sentiments. Of course the talking meters are works of art, not public works, and they aren’t on sidewalks--but in bookstores and museums. In exchange for your deposited coin, you hear messages from people with AIDS or their family members and friends.

Cities across the nation are experimenting with electronic meters. But West Hollywood has among the most with the key feature, having installed 450 on its streets, said officials at Duncan Industries, the onetime yo-yo maker that built the first “park-o-meter” in 1936.

Berkeley is testing another kind of high-tech meter--one that accepts plastic prepayment debit cards.

Westwood has some of the same kind of meters as West Hollywood, but no keys have been sold. Los Angeles senior transportation engineer Jack Reynolds said that local merchants are unwilling to sell the keys and that the city lacks the personnel to do it. Los Angeles officials also question whether motorists will buy keys when opportunities to use them are limited.

Vandalism is another problem.

“We have a tremendous amount of vandalism right now,” said Robert Yates, head of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. “We want to be careful before we make a huge investment in electronic wizardry.”

Los Angeles has lost 4,400 meters to thieves in the last two years. Although the meters weigh 40 to 45 pounds and are made of cast iron and steel, thieves still find a way to break them open.

“They destroy the meter for $3 or $4 worth of change,” he said. “It costs $300 to replace.” He said the city is testing an anti-theft device that appears to be working.

Officials at Duncan Industries say they discourage meter theft by reducing, if not eliminating, the use of coins.

Los Angeles officials are planning to experiment with a pocket-size personal parking meter, which is placed on the dashboard.

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The meters, in use in San Diego, are initially being made available by Los Angeles officials to delivery trucks but eventually may be provided to everyone.

Drivers activate the meter with a prepaid “smart card.” A screen on the device signifies to traffic cops how long the car has been parked.

The advantage of the vehicle-based meter is “you only pay for what you use,” said Yates.

The program is aimed at the package and mail delivery services such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service, which each rack up between $17,000 and $20,000 a month in parking fines.

Despite the fear of vandalism, Los Angeles is buying more electronic parking meters sans the key feature, though it can be added later. Officials say the high-tech meters are easier to maintain than the older mechanical ones.

The new equipment records the amount deposited, providing tighter audit control over the $18.5-million deposited each year into Los Angeles’ 41,000 meters.

The new meters also are more likely to reject foreign coins, slugs and other things that scofflaws try to use.

“They try everything they can to get time on the meter,” Reynolds said. “They stick slugs in there. They stick tiddly winks in there. We even had one person who drilled a hole through a quarter, tied a thread through it and tried to pull it out. The quarter was in there with a string on it. They couldn’t pull it out.”