Those not-so-popular parking kiosks

Read this story by Michele Young on the history of the Kamloops parking kiosks in the Wednesday, Jan. 7 edition of The Kamloops Insider, a City of Kamloops newsletter.

Sometimes you shine, sometimes you don’t. The City’s mistakes are often out in the open for all to see. We’re willing to admit our mistakes, take responsibility for them and learn from them. But we do some awesome stuff too – stuff the people of Kamloops should be as proud of as we are.

They’ve been a source of public grumbling for about a year. They were late to arrive. They were hard to figure out. They were difficult to read. The screens were too low. The shiny new parking kiosks that now grace the streets of downtown Kamloops weren’t popular with everyone from the get-go. And when people hate paying for parking to begin with, messing with the system by replacing meters with computerized kiosks will make some hate it even more.

City corporate services and community safety director David Duckworth said the kiosks have become one of the most contentious issues he’s handled in his two-and-a-half decades in municipal government.

The 840 old meters only accepted a few types of coins and were failing regularly — as was the software for them, he said. The Kamloops Central Business Improvement Association created a committee with input from City staff and council. They recommended to council that the parking meter technology be upgraded. Before the change was made, several public consultations were held and there was strong support to proceed. Criteria for replacements included accepting a broader range of coins, accepting credit cards, the ability to pay by cell phone, less maintenance, solar power and paying by licence plate.

The City put out a request for proposals. Interested companies had to come to a mandatory meeting with the City. Of those that attended, three submitted qualified proposals that were reviewed. Toronto-based Precise Parklink was selected, but had to get all the kiosks installed and fully running before being paid approximately $700,000 after one year. (The original budget for the parking-meter equipment was $1.2 million.) There’s a two-year performance bond in place to ensure all contract commitments are met. “Any time we do a large-scale contract, we have safeguards in place,” Duckworth said.

The 90 kiosks were to be installed by mid-November, 2013. Then the October 2013 U.S. government shut down and some parts for the kiosks were temporarily unavailable. But by May 2014, the kiosks were all in. Then the mobile phone payment system was delayed by eight months. The kiosks take 25 to 50 seconds to process because they have to send the information to a server, confirm a credit card if that’s the method of payment, and also send out the licence plate to the City bylaws handheld machines. “It’s not instant,” he said. “When you’re outside and it’s -20, it’s frustrating.”

The kiosk screens are low because they’re designed to meet American Disability Association (ADA) requirements. “There’s nothing we can do about the screen height. It’s to meet disability guidelines,” said Duckworth. The City recently found out the dim screens can be reprogrammed to be made 20 per cent brighter, so that’s coming soon. In addition, the City is trying out a bigger colour screen on a kiosk outside of McAllister and Howard on the south side of 200-block Victoria Street. There is a $2,000 cost for the colour screen, but the City might add them on some of the more-used kiosks in the future as there’s been positive feedback.

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