Ranking those parking kiosks at TRU, RIH and downtown

THE ARMCHAIR MAYOR COLUMN — Every time I run into somebody from the City or from the BIA, they get all defensive about the downtown parking kiosks.

Every time I run into somebody who has just finished fighting with a parking kiosk, they get all red in the face.

They hate ’em. But, are they the worst game in town, parking-kiosk-wise? For the sake of comparison, let’s look at the competition. (We’ll limit it to public parking, and exclude private lots.)

Thompson Rivers University — These ones are fairly simple to operate once you get the hang of them, but they aren’t totally intuitive. The dashboard has a whole raft of letter buttons.

Since nobody could figure out which ones to use while reading the instructions, the helpful TRU parking guys have taken permanent markers and drawn arrows beside the correct ones. These machines are cluttered with stickers but fast, which is an advantage. But that $5-a-day flat rate is just cruel. I rolled the dice a couple weeks ago when I showed up on campus at 4:30, and half expected to find a ticket when I got back to my car. Fortunately, I got away with it. Several times, I’ve witnessed students paying it forward — stuffing their unexpired tickets into the ticket slot of the machine so the next person can use it. I like that.

Royal Inland Hospital — Long the bane of hospital visitors, for years and years people complained about the parking set-up there to no avail. But the current machines are actually pretty good.

I used the one at the oversized-vehicle lot for the test (the oversized-vehicle lot is somebody’s idea of a joke — it’s where you have to park if you have a truck too tall for the parkade, but the lot is so tiny it takes you 20 minutes to wedge your way in there). The screen on the kiosk is at the perfect height for averagely tall people. It has a very easy-to-use raised button numbers pad. It’s easy to figure out and it’s fast. You do have to remember the number of your parking stall when you walk from it to the machine.

Downtown — I had such high hopes but those hopes were dashed. I know the height of the screen is designed so wheelchair people can see it, but for everyone else those kiosks are a pain in the butt. You can pay either with credit card or coin, which is nice, but using your credit card takes forever.

With a coin, you can be done in about 30 seconds, but with a credit card you can expect to triple that time, and that’s assuming you’re a veteran at it. By the time you’re finished paying there’s a lineup behind you. The instructions, both those written on the outside of the kiosk and those on the screen, are too complicated. The keypad is glitchy. Sometimes the things just don’t work at all. Not having to put your receipt on your dashboard is handy. So is adding time later. Maybe the soon-to-be-unveiled app will help some. But they were, quite simply, a bad choice.

So, which one is Number One? Where talking about the best of a bad lot. TRU’s machines would get a C+ if it weren’t for that $5 rate (as opposed to $1.50 an hour at RIH and a buck downtown) but the price makes me so cranky I’m giving them an F.

Don’t even get me started again on the downtown kiosks. F.

The best of the three is at RIH. C+.

But there’s one that’s better than all of them. It’s called a parking meter. Simple, easy to use, very fast. We should try to find some more of them.

There’s a Saturday Armchair Mayor poll above this item if you have your own opinions.

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