In San Francisco no less
San Francisco has been working on making parking “smarter” for quite a while now, and it’s just recently taken another big step in that direction by starting to replace over 5,000 older parking meters with the snazzy new model pictured above. Those will not only let you pay with a credit or debit card (and soon a special SFMTA card), but automatically adjust parking rates based on supply and demand, which means you could pay anywhere from $0.25 to $6.00 an hour depending on how many free spaces there are. Those rates are determined with the aid of some sensors that keep a constant watch on parking spaces, which also means you’ll be able to check for free spaces in an area on your phone or your computer before you even leave the house.
fedora flip: rob jefferson.
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August 9, 2010 at 4:35 am
Pricing Parking Spots in SF « Algorithmic Game-Theory/Economics
[…] NYT, Engadget, Cheaptalk] Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)San Francisco’s quest for the perfect price […]
August 9, 2010 at 8:34 am
Elizabeth Edith
all the fun is now gone from the parking-spot hunt. It was fun while it lasted. It’s really interesting to me that it goes up to $6 an hour. I wonder how this will change the prices of private parking places around the city.
August 9, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Raghav Parthasarathy
Also the problem with different cost would be that folks who shell out much lesser parking charges would end up eating parking space for way too much time.