Parking, Parking, Parking! For such a small city, we sure do have parking woes ...ranging from customers in Midtown complaining about not being to park RIGHT in front of a business to parking kiosks with sinister minds of their own. Today the city council was assured by Curb Systems/Secure Storage Technologies that the number of dumbfounded downtowners scratching their heads while gazing at 'the machine' should drop dramatically, thanks to new interfaces installed, new wiring, and new sprinkles of hope that the city can stop what is amounting to a $300,000+ loss in parking revenues.
I feel for Curb Systems. From a tech perspective, it was a new system, tested only on a pilot block, and in a prior meeting Curb Systems claimed they encountered what we'll call 'dirty power' in the city's antiquated downtown power grids. This doesn't surprise me, and can be an electrical engineering nightmare requiring power quality analysis and mitigation. I'm glad they were able to work through their issues. Ultimately, it's pretty cool having a local company designing and installing these. Hopefully, Reno will get more nationwide exposure as they try to sell this system to other cities.
An interesting fact, this whole process began in 2010.
Below is an interesting video on parking I found from http://www.reinventingparking.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRyG8aYn2G0