Victoria’s 185 or so remaining coin-fed parking meters could soon be a thing of the past.
The city has put out a call for their replacement and is evaluating submissions.
Victoria has almost 2,000 on-street parking spaces downtown. While most parking is metered through numbered stalls and pay stations, introduced a decade ago, about 185 of the old meters were left at spots for people with disabilities, small vehicles, 20-minute parking zones and on streets where there are too few spaces to warrant installing a pay station.
The city is looking to upgrade the old meters so they’ll accept credit cards and has asked for bids to either replace the old meter heads or to retrofit them with new mechanisms.
Credit cards are used at pay stations about 25 per cent of the time, said city spokesman Bill Eisenhauer.
New meters would also be Internet-connected so instant transaction reporting is available to city staff similar to the current pay stations and ParkVictoria app, he said.
The plan is for up to three vendors to be selected for a six-month on-street field test of their equipment before a final selection is made.
The city then will have a small trial of the winning vendor to ensure the meters meet needs, before determining the roll out plan for wider replacement.
