LUKE e-park parking meters are in place; what do you think?
The Ann Arbor DDA has installed a series of parking meter machines that they have called e-park on Main Street, Liberty Street, and State Street in downtown Ann Arbor. Instead of feeding coins into a meter, you walk a little ways down the street and feed coins or a credit card into the machine which handles a group of nearby meters. If you need to add money to avoid a ticket, you can add it to any e-park meter in town or even pay by phone.
The meters are the LUKE multi-space pay station from Digital Payment Technologies, a privately held firm based in Burnaby, BC, Canada.
These meters have been installed by a number of other municipalities. Here's some of the commentary I've been able to gather from other cities.
Brookline, Mass, from the Wicked Local news site:
The machines are relatively expensive. Two cost approximately $25,000, compared to a $700 single-head meter. The money is coming from capital improvement program funding. DPW workers and anyone else working with them will have to undergo a training program.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin from OnMilwaukee:"LUKE not cool":
If you haven't visited or done business in Downtown Milwaukee for a while, let me warn you about something that is likely to puzzle you the next time you're there. Its name is LUKE. That's the name of the new parking meters in downtown Milwaukee. LUKE. Just plain ol' LUKE.
Bellingham, Washington removed some of their LUKE meters in 2006 after merchant complaints; the council meeting minutes there include the memorable phrase "nuke the LUKEs".
The LUKE meter is named after the Paul Newman character in the movie Cool Hand Luke and the crime that sends him to prison.
The Ann Arbor District Library has six copies of Cool Hand Luke in their collection.
Comments
glimmertwin
Wed, Jan 26, 2011 : 7:31 p.m.
Didn't Burt Reynolds also get busted in "The Longest Yard" for breaking off the heads of parking meters?
Trek Glowacki
Fri, Aug 7, 2009 : 3:56 p.m.
@Robert Choquette Good to know! It seemed impossible to believe (although there seems to be some confusion at the DDA level of the exact functionality of the meters) Can you address why the designers opted to exclude several of the traditional features of parking systems? I'm assuming there's no technical reason a new patron couldn't use up the remaining time of a previous patron, only adding the amount of addition time he needed. Or perhaps this is already possible and we've simply opted to not turn it on for our community?
Robert Choquette
Fri, Aug 7, 2009 : 1:54 p.m.
Trek, Thank you for your keen interest in Digital's LUKE On-Street Pay Stations. I am curious about your claim of a "known possible exploit" for our machines. In your comments you discuss the possibility that a person could pay for parking in a space and have that time overridden by "a single trickster with a roll of nickels" thus making them "a sitting duck for the ticketers". This scenario is not possible and will only result in the trickster needlessly spending a roll of nickels. The machines are designed to work as follows: Person A parks in stall 17 at 1:00 PM and deposits enough money to cover one hour of parking. She receives a receipt that indicates an expiry time of 2:00 PM. The "trickster", from another machine somewhere in the city, deposits enough money at 1:20 PM to purchase five minutes of time for stall 17. The "trickster" receives a receipt that indicates an expiry time of 1:25 PM. He walks away feeling vindicated that he has sabotaged someone. An enforcement officer attends the block where Person A is parked at 1:30 PM and retrieves an enforcement report from the system. This report shows stall 17 is still valid and that the expiry time is 2:00 PM not 1:25 as the "trickster" had counted upon. Person A does not receive a citation. The system is designed to benefit the original customer and account for the accidental (or in this case, purposeful) mis-entered stall number. When enforcement reports are pulled, they will always take the latest expiry time stored in the system. It is interesting to note that the benefit of having these pay stations "networked" was missed in the course of this discussion. This feature benefits the parker in the sense that they could park their car, purchase an initial amount of time, walk, shop, or dine in a completely different area of town until their time almost expired. They then could purchase additional parking at a unit close to them without having to go back to the original meter as you would with the old machines. Additionally, these new meters offer more ways to pay than the previous single head units. With a PCI Certified level of credit card data security, the new pay stations give you peace of mind that your information is safe from harm and do not require you to carry around a roll of nickels or quarters to pay for parking. Regards, Robert Choquette Technical Product Manager Digital Payment Technologies
Trek Glowacki
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 : 6:36 p.m.
@Joe Morehouse "All analogies are flawed" as they say. Food cannot be re-served for health reasons, and hotels do, in fact, refund money to customers who leave early and rent that same room again to new customers. I believe this is called "excellent customer service" by smiling, name-badged service workers. Here's two for ya: If I rent an apartment for a year, but move after 11 months are you suggesting the landlord should be entitled to take rent money from both me *and* a new tenant for month 12? If a pay for 5 songs in a jukebox and have to leave early, are you suggesting that a bar owner has the right to stop the music once I've gone? The point of my original post is that the underlying workflow of spill-over parking has worked for years. The new meters are attempting "fix" the problem by decoupling space and time. Doing this opens up a fairly obvious, highly annoying flaw. The problem *only* exists because there is an attempt to maximize gain. You could, just as easily, have digitally recreated the old "two bits for twelve minutes!" system. Finding an open meter with a few extra minutes left is often the highlight of someone's morning and a solid source of life enriching high-fives. The new meters also lack the ability for kind-hearted, swan-loving citizens to put money in expired meters, sparing some poor schmuck a potential ticket. Sadly, the loss of joy-increasing features is not matched by the joys of the new system: "the patron still holds her/his receipt and can show this to the parking referee to have a parking ticket voided" sounds less like a pleasurable customer experience and more like a heart thumping dash to every garbage can I passed to find a stub of paper I thought was trash but turned out to be my pass to "avoid a $25 ticket"-land (and that is assuming I have the time to appear before the parking referee). Huzzah? (Parenthetical note: I don't own a car, so I don't pay for parking at meters or anywhere else).
Joe Morehouse
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 : 4:54 p.m.
The first scenario is correct in that you would not know how much time was left from the patron who parked in the space before you. This is an interesting question you raise. Are you suggesting that patrons who dont want to pay for lunch should nosh on the leftovers left behind by previous diners? Would this also extend to suggesting that hotel guests shouldnt pay, but rather should be given information about when previous guests had checked out before the official checkout time so they could use the unused hotel time. In both these situations, someone else had paid for something of value, but left something behind that could still be used by others should the public be entitled to this? Great question. As to the second scenario, yes, a person with dubious intentions could void a patrons transaction by making a new transaction using a nickel. But in this scenario the patron still holds her/his receipt and can show this to the parking referee to have a parking ticket voided if there was a problem. There will always be miscreants. For instance, with our current technology, mischief makers are stuffing the coin slot and making it impossible for a patron to pay. There is no perfect technology, as there will always be some folks who may want to cause trouble. Hope this is helpful best wishes.
Fred Posner
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 : 2:19 p.m.
I've called it twice. Both times were dead air and hangup.
Trek Glowacki
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 : 1:56 p.m.
@Jim Deakins I haven't personally tested this. However, I know the person who uncovered the exploit; several people who have verified this with their own cars. Even more insidious: each machine has access to all parking spots, city-wide. A single trickster with a roll of nickels could (at the time the exploit was discovered) give every spot a potential ticket. There *may* be a verification process at the ticket-givers end to help avoid this.
Trek Glowacki
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 : 1:52 p.m.
This will probably be removed for being off-topic, but kudos for linking to the AADL for those who want to explore tangental topics.
Matt Hampel
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 : 1:47 p.m.
At least we're not using the variety with prepaid cards. It looks like those can be easily hacked
Fred Posner
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 : 1:45 p.m.
Nice that the DDA is using public money to support American companies and jobs. Oh wait... scratch that.
Trek Glowacki
Wed, Aug 5, 2009 : 1:35 p.m.
These meters have a known possible exploit that allows people to cause some serious trouble: First Scenario: Person A parks their car in Space #100 and pays at the machine for 1 hour. He gets a stub that will allow him to return and add time. Person B arrives after Person A has left. Even if Person A had remaining time left on Space #100, Person B cannot access it. So, if Person A leaves early the money is pure profit. Person B must park, go to the machine, say "I want to add money for new parking" and add her *own* time to Space #100. This is a much pitched "feature" of these systems: no spill-over parking. It is also their greatest vulnerability to mischief. Second Scenario: Person A parks their car in Space #100 and pays at the machine for 1 hour. He gets a stub that will allow him to return and add time. Person B arrives *before* Person A leaves. He goes to the machine, and claims to be a newly parked car and deposits $0.05 (enough for about 4 minutes of parking). Person A's car now has 4 minutes of parking (not 1 hour and 4 minutes as he would with a physical meter). 4 minutes later, Person A's car is now a sitting duck for the ticketers.