My favorite Fox News contributor — the lovely and talented Anne Linehan — points out the city’s newest way of pissing away my hard-earned money:
City Council has approved a $15 million contract for 1,500 world-class parking meters. The company awarded the contract? ACS. We last heard of ACS as a red light camera contender, and in January, Metro chose ACS to come up with a new "smart card" fare system.
Read the links. Then Anne asks:
Does that mean the city’s $15 million investment will be reimbursed with parking meter profits? Houstonians can only hope it really will be a system that pays for itself.
Good question. Will they pay for themselves? Who knows. Maybe. We’ll see. But here’s one thing I know for sure: A $10,000 parking meter pays for itself a lot slower than a $145 parking meter, like the City of Great Falls, Mont. bought in 2004.
Then again, the new meters allow users to pay via cell phone or credit card, avoiding the horrific inconvenience of having to carry around an actual quarter. It’s way more convenient to stand there on the sidewalk and hope you don’t get mugged while the credit card transaction processes.
Filed Under Uncategorized · · · · 
Print This Post
··
Comments
26 Responses to “If it ain’t broke, spend $10K for a new one”Search
Our Sponsors
Poll
Loading ...
These things use WiFi to communicate too, I wonder how long it will be before some enterprising young person hacks them to obtain said credit card numbers…
Wouldnt’ it have been cheaper to install a tamper proof change machine?
No quarters in the meter, no vandalism, no stealing meters for drug money.
It’s a win -win situation except for the potential thief.
well, we can’t please everyone at the same time!
Wrong, Rahman. The meters still take coins, and they’ll take bills.
Keep in mind it’s these meters that create the justification for the Mayors city wide “free” WiFi.
Read the parking Meter RFP. Any $$ from the meters will go to pay for the wireless infrastructure.
Why not just let me give you all my money. Savings,checking and retirement and you let me drive and park wherever TF I want. Jeeezzz. How many more ways can these inbred banjo playing poo poo heads take more of our money to piss away on bonuses and studies? Why not tax the level of BS and incompetence that comes out of the halls of guv?
#4 Matt
I stand corrected
I work in the technology industry, and wireless-enabled parking meters sound really cool and all, but riddle me this: Is it really ‘fiscally sound’ to spend this sort of money on parking meters just because they’ll ‘pay for themselves’?
Let me see…this makes sense…we’ll install an overly complicated, expensive system of parking meters that most folks (with the exception of a few gadget-freaks) will still just put quarters into, except now, they will have to probably go to the trouble of remembering where they parked and selecting the proper parking spot ID because each meter now manages multiple parking spots. No room for error there. If they’re stupid enough to pay for the wrong spot, we’ll just give them a parking ticket.
Yeah, that sounds like a plan…
Geez - ACS, Microsoft, Reliant, etc. are making out like bandits, now that I think about it. Wireless-capable parking meters, new power drops (weren’t the previous parking meters mechanical?), wireless networking infrastructure, SQL servers, some method of securing the whole thing, maintenance contracts, software upgrates, storage, server hardware, a couple of wired network switches, the list goes on. Sure, this makes perfect sense now. Somebody from ACS must have a sister-in-law or something on the city council…
man, if you just invent something that collects money; the government will make you rich ! (parking meters, slot machines, metro. although, these could all be the same thing with different names).
*****and what’s up with the LST staff ? are they mailing it in with all these Anne Linehan links or what ! (must have astros tickets today).
Stupid is as stupid does. There is not much left that can astound me about the City of Houston. I got out as soon as I could and never looked back. The only thing I dread more than an IRS audit notice is one that says You have been chosen for jury duty and have to come downtown. No wonder nobody shows except idiots like me.
It’s easy for the city council and mayor to vote for these types of things. After all, it’s not their money!
#11 JRB
I got out of Hou. three years ago and it was a blessing. I pitty the “poor” folks who are still there and have to put up with this stuff!
#6 T-Bone:
If they taxed the BS and incompetence, the guvs would be self-sustaining! That is, of course until the polly-tickans ran out of their own dough!
Now there’s a unique proposition!
How long is it going to take for the meters ‘to pay for itself’??
In the meantime, the city will be losing revenue from the meters currently in use (and presumably already paid for) because the new meters will have to pay for themselves before profits are realized.
Does the city have the $15 million it is going to cost initially, or is it going to have to pay interest on top of that until the meters ‘pays for itself’??
My question is, how much is it really going to cost, and how much revenue will the city lose in the meantime until the glitzy meters are all paid for? I suspect that by the time the damn meters are paid for, they will all need to be replaced!
Consider though the high salaries and the bonuses and lucrative pensions paid to some city employees, this may become a bargain.
Do those meters work in the rain? how about the heat and humidity?
I shudder to think that when they are delivered, they likely will run only with SimDesk software…Suckers!!!!!!!!!!
LOL! Royko wins!
Carol Alvarado thinks this is a good idea, so I’m sure we’re not getting screwed. She pointed out that instructions are in three different languages. How diverse is that? If Carol is pushing these, I’d bet she’s getting “bird dogs” from the manufacturer/distributor/retailer.
How many officers could we hire with that $15MIL ?
I’m glad we have our priorities in order !!!
Am I in the Twilight Zone?
No, but our plan of city management is from there….
#8 Jimb
Actually, I live in a city that uses these (not wi-fi but credit card charges)and they are easy to use and a lot less hassle than finding quarters. The ones here handle 4 different spots each which creates a $2500 investment per spot. At $2 per hour x 8 hours per day means you can recoup your investment in 156 days. Realizing they might not always be full you will still be able to cover your costs within a year. Labour cost would probably be less as workers have to check only 1/4 the machines.
I am all for reigning in government spending and think they spent too much. I would have preferred a trial with 5 units or so for trial before spending the whole lot. Also, the whole wi-fi and phone charge thing is a bit overkill. Once again, a trial run may have proven useful.
Not to mention the “leaders”…
And by the way #10, us poor LST staff type our fingers to the bone to give you timely, intelligent, insightful, entertaining (occasionally unintentionally) content, but even WE sometimes get scooped, Mrs. Linehan IS Lovely and talented after all… and has connections over at FOX too…. and she lurks around here once in a while to boot….
#20 Rorschach
For what it’s worth I appreciate LST greatly - a primary conservative news source for me as all I get here is MSM and liberal bias. Thank you.
Sorry about your fingers.
19: NZTexas, I’d be willing to bet the city will recoup its investment. Hell, Coca-Cola could start putting flat-screen TVs in every Coke machine and it would eventually recoup its investment. But why add the cost? The city doesn’t need to spend that much money to generate the revenue. I’ll use your numbers as an example.
You recouped the cost of a $2500 parking meter space in 156 days by bringing in 2 bucks an hour, 8 hours a day.
Even if a standard $200 coin-operated parking meter is only in operation for HALF that time ($2/hour times 4 hours), you recoup your cost in 25 days compared to 156.
And that assumes that electronic parking meters will increase demand for parking, which I don’t buy at all. Look at your options if you want to park downtown:
1) Pay a meter.
2) Go to a pay lot.
3) Park illegally and get ticketed/booted/towed.
For short trips, option #1 is the only one that has ever made any sense, and that won’t change. Thus, the new meters aren’t going to take business away from lots. If you’ve got a system that works just fine, why spend 50 times more for a more complicated, difficult-to-maintain system that requires training, software, electricity, network connectivity and complex security?
"Because it’s cutting-edge" is not a good enough answer.
22 - Matt “Zilla” Bramanti
no argument here - if it ain’t broken don’t fix it. $10000 per unit seems extravangant anyway. I imagine if they wanted to improve their system for whatever reason then just accepting a credit card would have sufficed - or even dollar bills over coins(won’t increase demand for parking but increases paying options/accessibility). Cost analysis during a trial period would establish what improvement, if any, was the right one.
Pay lots by private business are my first choice.
You nailed it, NZ. There’s just no regard for cost. Yeah, these parking meters are pretty cool.
City government should not be in the cool business, because it costs too damn much.
Every day, I see stuff I’d like to have. Big screen TVs, Corvettes, helicopters, you name it. The reason I have none of those things is because I can’t afford it. When you’ve got taxing authority, though, it’s a whole lot easier to justify pissing money away.
I foresee a parking voucher system for the poor/minorities/illegals next
Did band camp uniforms come with the meters
Or do they have hidden camera’s in them