> I certainly don't agree with that one. I really don't miss having to pay for a fixed number of hours and then having to figure out what to do if I'm running late
But they are worse than mid-2000s tech. I used to have a tag with an lcd timer that I loaded up with cash periodically. When I parked in a metered space in the city, I just turn the thing on and hang it on my driver window. It was synced with the parking schedule, so the timer wouldn’t run until metered parking started and stopped at the end of metered parking. Parking enforcement simply had to look at the tag to make sure it was on and had a positive value. When I came back, I just shut the thing off—I paid for exactly what I used, always. Great UX: turn on thing, hang in window, remove, turn off thing, plug into computer to add money every few months.
Compare to now where there’s An App that requires multiple taps to tell it which street your on, which car, oh look it forgot your credit card and they don’t take Apple Pay, time to enter all that data in again… oh yeah, also you have to overbuy parking and they charge transaction fees every time if you try to buy exact and add time later.
Also, now parking enforcement has to key in everyone’s license plates to figure out if they’re legal or not (no automated plate readers—they’re illegal in this state). Apart from being annoying, now that data is conveniently harvested.
But they are worse than mid-2000s tech. I used to have a tag with an lcd timer that I loaded up with cash periodically. When I parked in a metered space in the city, I just turn the thing on and hang it on my driver window. It was synced with the parking schedule, so the timer wouldn’t run until metered parking started and stopped at the end of metered parking. Parking enforcement simply had to look at the tag to make sure it was on and had a positive value. When I came back, I just shut the thing off—I paid for exactly what I used, always. Great UX: turn on thing, hang in window, remove, turn off thing, plug into computer to add money every few months.
Compare to now where there’s An App that requires multiple taps to tell it which street your on, which car, oh look it forgot your credit card and they don’t take Apple Pay, time to enter all that data in again… oh yeah, also you have to overbuy parking and they charge transaction fees every time if you try to buy exact and add time later.
Also, now parking enforcement has to key in everyone’s license plates to figure out if they’re legal or not (no automated plate readers—they’re illegal in this state). Apart from being annoying, now that data is conveniently harvested.