 "Photo: Mary Kang/The Daily Texan")
New parking pay stations were put into place around Austin this month with the hopes of making parking more accessible, but confusion about the new system could lead to unwarranted parking tickets for students.
Many people returning to their cars on Thursday were surprised to find what appeared to be a tickets on their windshields. The tickets were actually warnings that they hadn’t properly attached their payment receipt and could face a parking violation in the future.
Starting in August, the Austin Transportation Department installed new pay stations that are solar-powered and take debit and credit cards in addition to coins. The stations replaced nearly 3,800 outdated single-space parking meters around the city.
Karla Villalon, an Austin Transportation Department spokeswoman, said they have had a positive reaction to the new stations from the public. She said people like the ability to use their credit cards and the extended parking length offered for several of the stations around the city.
“I like being able to use my credit card and not have to worry about having coins all the time,” said UT accounting junior Nathan Sowell. “The old ones used to break all the time too, so hopefully these will be more reliable”
The system is different because instead of having a different meter for every parking spot, there can be one pay station for upward of 11 spots, Villalon said. The station prints a receipt with the time remaining which the driver is expected to attach to their passenger side window.
“Its an extra step,” she said. “People have to go to the machine and then walk back to their cars. Some people aren’t used to this.”
The problem lies in where to attach the ticket, which isn’t as intuitive as you would expect, she said.
The majority of the cars parked on Guadalupe Street on Thursday around 3 p.m. had their receipts laying on their dashboards and several were located on the driver’s side, in violation of the directions printed on the machine.
“There are visual directions as well as written ones on the station and the ticket to avoid confusion,” Villalon said.
Villalon said the city is giving people about a 10-day grace period to get used to the new system, but that after that people could start receiving violations if they don’t attach their receipts to the windshield in the correct location.
She said that the requirements for attaching the receipt are there for the user’s and the parking attendant’s safety.
“We don’t want people going in the street to put the ticket in the driver’s-side window, and we don’t want our parking attendants to have to go into the street to check them.” she said.
They must be attached so that the attendants can see them clearly, so having them on the dashboard makes things difficult, she said.
“It’s a problem, especially in the cases of trucks which are very high off the ground, and it may not be possible to see something laying on the dashboard,” she said.
She said the city sent “parking ambassadors” to many locations to educate people about the new system but that many people are still improperly placing their receipt.
Susan Fisher, who was in town to visit an Austin seminary, was surprised to learn that she was violating directions when she parked on the Drag and would have committed a violation if it had happened in the future.
“I’d be pretty bummed if I got a ticket for not attaching the ticket, especially since I’m out of state,” she said.
She said she had no idea the ticket had to be attached to the curb-side window, despite directions on the pay station, and said she and her daughter just naturally placed it on the dash like many other parking tickets.
“I think they should change it so you don’t have to attach it or make it more clear,” she said.
The city expects people to quickly adapt to the new system and doesn’t see it being an issue in the future.
“We know it’s a new process, but we hope that with time it will become second nature for people,” Villalon said.
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