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Meters to accept new $20 Park Card Plastic, prepaid cards good at 750 spots in the city Thursday, May 13, 1999 By Johnna A. Pro, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
You have your MAC card, your credit card, your phone card.
Come Monday, you also could have a $20 Park Card, a disposable plastic debit card that allows drivers to park at nearly 750 gold domed meters in the city without worrying about carrying quarters.
"Our intention is to add convenience for our parking customers," said Ralph Horgan, executive director of Pittsburgh Parking Authority, which is implementing the program.
Drivers simply slide the prepaid card into the electronic meter and buy time up to the meter's limit.
On Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside, for example, where a quarter gets 30 minutes of time on a parking meter, a driver would need four quarters to buy the two-hour limit.
A driver armed with the $20 Park Card, though, can insert it into a slot on the meter. The digital display on the meter will flash four times, indicating the amount that the card is currently worth -- $20 on a new card, for example.
Then the meter will begin to flash the number of minutes a driver is buying as it automatically deducts the meter charge from the card value.
The driver will simply pull the card out of the slot when the meter reaches the desired time limit, up to the maximum.
The next time the driver uses the card, the meter will flash the new amount the card is worth.
So if you parked for two hours at an Ellsworth meter on Monday, didn't use the card all week and parked Downtown on Friday afternoon, the flashing meter would say you have $18 remaining on the card.
Once the card reaches zero, the driver simply throws it away and buys a new card. And, while the cards are disposable, they don't expire.
"If it takes you a week to use the money or six weeks, it doesn't matter," said Anthony Boule, the parking authority's director of administration who is overseeing the program. "The card is to be treated like cash."
He said the cards could be used in combination with quarters. If a driver has $1 left on a card and wants additional time, he can still put quarters into a meter.
People who park often at meters also can buy multiple cards, Boule said.
But because the cards are like cash, if a driver loses a card, he's out the money.
One of the key benefits of the card, especially for those people who track their expenditures for tax purposes, is that the parking authority will issue receipts when one buys a card.
For now, the cards can be used only at about 750 meters Downtown or in Shadyside. The meters are those that now have gold domes, a color Boule selected to represent not only the Golden Triangle, but also the city's traditional love affair with the colors black and gold.
"Gold is rich. It catches your eye," he said.
As of now, the parking authority does not plan to purchase additional meters, Horgan said.
"If we find that people use them, we'll expand them citywide," he said.
Citywide there are roughly 7,000 parking meters.
Drivers may begin purchasing the cards Monday at various locations throughout the city, including the parking authority offices Downtown.
The parking authority will provide brochures explaining how the cards work, as well as maps showing the meter locations.
The $20 Park Card program has been in the works since 1987 and was expected to start in January 1998. The authority held back, though, in part because of internal staffing changes and in part because of questions about the technology.
The final step was a pilot project conducted this year when 20 residents of Shadyside were given the cards to test.
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