The Parking Meters Have Eyes
The new parking meters in Madrid, Spain are very judgmental. They determine parking rates by what kind of car you drive! How do they know when you're driving? When paying for parking, drivers have to enter their license plate number into a key pad on the meter. Information on your car is pulled up from that, then a parking rate is determined, based on the car's age and model. Hybrids and fuel-efficient models are given a discount.
But will this unfairly penalize people who are driving older cars because they can't afford a new one?
Here's the story from Bloomberg Businessweek.
About SRTC
SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.
SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.
2 comments:
Just because the car is old does not make it a gas guzzler, I hope they can tell from the license which is and which is not.
Seems to me like there's the potential for some mess-ups with this system. I'm curious to see how long the program lasts...
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