LA's New Parking Meters Offer Text Alerts, Accept Credit Cards & Mobile Payments

Los Angeles, California, Mayor Villaraigosa kicked off the multi-phase Parking Management Program (PMP) and unveiled the new "Easy Park - Easy Pay" parking meters in a parking lot in North Hollywood, last week.

The "Easy Park - Easy Pay" meters - which will replace the outdated single space parking meters - are single, multi-unit, state-of-the-art machines that offer motorists a broad range of options to pay for designated parking spaces, including paying by credit card, debit card or cell phone. The new meters will alert drivers by text message when time expires

The unveiling and installation of these meters represents the first phase of Mayor Villaraigosa's PMP plan, which aims to improve parking throughout the City by giving motorists better customer service and more reliable and efficient parking meters.

"These parking meters will offer customers a more reliable and efficient way to pay for parking in Los Angeles," Mayor Villaraigosa said. "This new technology will provide LA drivers with a much more convenient alternative to the every-day stress of paying to park in this city."

"Anyone in Los Angeles who has parked on the street or in public lots knows the frustration of broken parking meters and the stress of scraping for spare change to cover your trip to the local store," Mayor Villaraigosa said. "With our new 'Easy Park - Easy Pay' parking meters, that stress and frustration will end."

In addition, after evaluating and researching the best available parking meter technology, LA Department of Transportation (LADOT) engineers will replace 4,000 single space, on-street meters with the "Easy Park - Easy Pay" devices. LADOT will also swap nearly 1,000 meters in 30 City parking lots with "Park and Pay" stations.

There are 40,000 single space meters in the City of Los Angeles, and under the direction of Mayor Villaraigosa, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation will eventually replace all single space meters with the "Easy Park - Easy Pay" meters.

On May 30, 2007, the City Council approved an initial deployment plan to upgrade 6,000, or 15 percent, of existing metered spaces.