DDOT to Install Solar-Powered Parking Meters

If the thought of driving into DC for your destination of choice sends you angrily couch-diving for quarters, the District Department of Transportation offers a beacon of hope. DDOT announced last week that it will commence work on a pilot program to install new solar-powered parking meters that take…wait for it…credit cards!

The 1,150 meters are the same ones that other major U.S. cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, are currently testing and have been found to have a failure rate of less than 1%. Not only are they easy to install, but the new technology is cost-effective because it uses the existing infrastructure; the current meter head is simply swapped out with the new solar-powered one.

The first meters to be installed will be in the most high-demand areas in Northwest and Southwest DC. From there, DDOT will expand to other areas based on additional funding, which they are currently seeking.

Check out the video to see how the new meters will work.

“This is a next step towards a complete revamp of our parking system over the next 12 months,” said DDOT Director Gabe Klein. “The new meters are also a piece of a comprehensive Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) architecture that that will tie together all of our assets with adaptive controls that change dynamically, and provide real time information to the public, and DDOT. From our signal system, to the Circulator Bus, to the parking system, all proactively communicating. Did we mention no more quarters?”

Despite our best efforts to encourage our fellow Washingtonians to use alternative modes of transportation, we understand that a few of you still like to drive. So when you’re tootling around (preferably in your hybrid with 6 people crammed into it), be on the lookout for the latest parking technology. And stay tuned for more developments in the DDOT crusade to make DC parking a model of efficiency and convenience!

By Anne Factor at goDCgo

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