Credit-card meters in downtown Durango have proven to be tough to read, confusing to use and difficult to manage.
That’s why, less than two years after installing 365 credit-card meters, city officials announced this week they will start searching for different meters next year.
“I think we need to fix our system to get something that works for the community ,” said Amber Blake, director of the Department of Transportation and Sustainability.
Since the meters were installed, the city has heard drivers like paying with credit cards, but the meters haven’t made it easy, she said.
“The domes glare and they are difficult to read in a variety of light and the font is small,” she said.
Two tourists, John and Vance Truskett, were struggling with this scenario along Main Avenue on Wednesday.
“It didn’t like my card evidently,” Vance Truskett said.
After the meter didn’t accept his card, Jack Llewellyn, the director of the Durango Chamber of Commerce, stopped and paid the meter for him.
But not everyone has had a good Samaritan nearby. In some cases, people attempt to pay with a credit card, but then they forget to press OK to finish the transaction and end up with tickets they don’t feel they deserved, Blake said.
Administration problems
The city paid Duncan Solutions $173,000 for the meters, or $475 apiece, as part of a larger investment in a whole parking-management system that included new software and other meters that take only smartcards and coins. But as the staff worked with the meters and the associated software, they found the system wasn’t truly integrated, and the company could not fulfill its contract, Blake said.
“I think they were working on the technology they were selling. ... I don’t think they were in production,” she said.
For example, city staff were supposed to be able to change the price on the meters from their computers. But instead, a programmer needed to create a new program for the meters, and the new program would fail on about 10 to 20 percent of credit-card meters. In some cases, new programs would break meters, and they would have to be sent back to the company. Sometimes, even once the meters returned, they didn’t work.
The city has also been unable to wrap up its parking ticket-amnesty program because of issues with the parking system and Duncan Solutions.
The amnesty program was started in January as a way to encourage those with old parking tickets to pay the original fine. It was scheduled to be wrapped up in May, but it is still not finished.
The system has been troubled in many other ways as well.
“We have a working spreadsheet of all of the issues that are not fixed,” Blake said.
That’s the reason the city chose not to roll out a program that would allow drivers to pay with their cellphones.
“We weren’t comfortable rolling out another branch of a supposedly integrated solution,” she said.
Recouping costs
Blake plans to try to resell the meters once the city purchases replacements to help make up for some of the lost investment.
In addition, the city has not been paying the $14,000 per year the company has been trying to bill them for the warranty.
Blake is also working with the city attorney on other possible action.
Durango City Councilor Christina Rinderle called the situation disappointing when it was presented to the board Tuesday.
“I look forward to hearing what the recourse could be,” she said.
Rolling forward
Instead of buying new meters right away, the city plans to ask several companies to provide test meters that will be installed for public use in 2016 before the city purchases a new set of credit-card meters, Blake said.
“We can take the parking meters for a test drive as a community,” she said.
The city will not have to pay for the test meters and it will allow the city to solicit feedback before buying new meters in 2017.
The city is not going to replace the entire system because they have found that a truly integrated parking system does not exist, Blake said.
Resident Dirk Lang, a regular parking meter customer, would like the city to take the opportunity to improve the system. For example, he would like to see meters that would print receipts that show how much time the customer paid for.
“I want to see some plan of action for our parking meters,” he said.
mshinn@durangoherald.com
This story has been updated to correct how often Duncan Solutions has been billing the city for its warranty.
