Update: Walnut Creek Moves Toward High-Tech Parking Meters For Downtown

UPDATE: We added further explanation of Mayor Pro Tem Bob Simmons' vote at the City Council meeting.

Like a little harder cut of the steering wheel as you back into a parking space, the city of Walnut Creek is making a parking adjustment.

"We want to pay by space because it's easier for the customer," city traffic engineer Rafat Raie told the City Council Tuesday.

The city had experimented with in the last two years. The conclusion: They are cost-effective in parking lots where a single station can handle dozens of spots, but not so much for on-street, curbside spaces where a station governs payment for only a few spots, said Raie.

The city is going forward with plans to install up to 1,000 high-tech, single space meters downtown that will accept credit cards, coins and sometime soon cellphone apps. The system will include single-space sensors with a Web interface that will help parking enforcement and the tracking of parking patterns, said city parking engineer Rafat Raie.

The high-tech meters might be on a slightly faster track than the sensors because there is apparently only a single vendor for the meters, Raie said. The sensors will go to open bid with three vendors competing for the civic business.

Council member Kish Rajan asked about the city owning the equipment. Raie said staff and the Downtown Parking Task Force looked at lease options but concluded it would be more expensive. It was estimated the city would fully pay for the meters within three years, and they have a life expectancy much more than that.

The sensors are salvageable and reusable when the city repaves streets, Raie said.

The council unanimously approved the purchase of up to 1,000 single-space meters, 1,073 sensors and monitoring equipment, for an amount not to exceed $900,000.

The approval was tempered by reluctance on the part of one yes vote. Mayor Pro Tem Bob Simmons said he was disappointed by the impact on walkability and aesthetics. "I thought we were moving away from single spaces," said Simmons. "I'm disappointed this seems to be going in the wrong direction."

In a followup email after the meeting, Simmons explained his reluctant support, saying "my understanding is that the existing single space meters were failing (some 100 or so had already failed and had been replaced). So, we were facing some replacement anyway, and the difference in cost wasn't that great, and the new meters were clearly far superior to the current meters in terms of being user friendly).

In a related move, the council unanimously approved a full-time assistant to the city manager position (converted from part-time). The assistant will be devoted to downtown parking management.

Assistant City Manager Lorie Tinfow said in the near term the position would be financed half by the downtown parking and enhancement fund, and half by the general fund. In the first year or two, Tinfow said she expected the person in the job would spend all of his or her time on parking management, perhaps evolving to a point of spending 15 percent of the individual's time on other city tasks.