IH02-LucianaCook

From IEOR 170 Spring 2007

Problem Description: Parking meters are inaccurate and cause people to stress about paying $40 for being one minute late. Although there are some who have a more innovative design, for the most part most of them are still your standard coin machines in an era of debit cards and electronic funds. There should be an easier way to pay for parking meters or reload another hour on the meter without searching for every coin in your car or walking to your car every 30mins to reload the parking meter.

Target Group: Anyone who owes a car and needs to find parking in crowded areas where parking is a hassle. Also for those who feel that they over pay for parking since they cannot calculate precisely how long they will take and they are forced to pay more than the time used. These same people also want to be able to re-insert money into parking meters to continue being able to park there, but it becomes a burden when you have to stop doing whatever it is that you are doing in order to walk down the street insert a couple more coins and then go back to what they were doing. This is something that these types of people would like to change.

Problem forces and Solution: There is an obvious reason for this annoying public parking system. There are obviously too many cars and no space to park them. My solution does not solve this problem, but it does offer an alternative solution. First, the parking meter should be re-design; it should become more adept to the 21st century. This means no more coin collecting machines. People should have the option of using credit, debit, or any type of cash to pay. The upside to using credit/debit cards would be that you would only be charged for the time spent there. This would give a solution to those who over pay parking meters for fear of a parking ticket.

This new parking meter would allow people to be able to stay more than the time limit s long as they pay double the fee. For instance, if you are given an Hour limit and you pay $1 for every then for an additional hour you must pay $2 the hour if you go for the 3rd hour you will have to pay $4 for the hour. Every hour after the time limit doubles. This way the government will still be able to punish people for over using public parking, but they won’t give an irrational $40 parking ticket for being late to your car by a couple of minutes. This system is only possible if you are using a credit/debit card. There are two possible ways you can keep track of the time a car is parked at a specific spot. You can have a sensor system in the parking meter or you can have a clock in type of system. The clock in system can work the following way, once a person parks they insert their credit/debit card and then they have to insert their driver’s license in order to be able to identify them. As soon as he does this the parking meter will start a timer, once the person is ready to leave he will reinsert the credit/debit card and pay for the time he was parked. If a person fails to pay and leaves he will receive a fine by mail to the address on his driver’s license. This system will allow for people to pay for however many hours they stay in the parking spot and also for the government to directly fine them if they do not follow the rules. This method can obviously only be used by people who have a driver’s license. A positive externality to this would be in case of a crime or anything of that sort the police can easily trace people to their location. A negative externality would be the decrease in jobs, since there won’t be as much of a need for parking re-enforcement people. This position won’t vanish but it will decrease in personnel. For those people who are still paying cash the current rules will apply the only upside for them would be that now they would be able to use any type of coins including pennies and dollars to pay. If they know they will stay longer than the time permitted they can also pre-pay the additional fee, but will loose money if they over calculate the time needed. Image:Meter215