City to enforce parking meter violations after completing $3.5M system upgrade

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Starting Monday, the city will begin enforcing parking meter violations after completing a $3.5 million system upgrade.

Back in January, the city’s old wireless credit card meters went offline, after wireless carrier Verizon upgraded its system to 4G.

It affected about 2,200 parking meters and cost the city about $1.7 million dollars in revenue. For eight months, city officials said HPD would not enforce payment at meters that accepted credit cards.

It continued enforcement at coin-only meters.

By Monday, officials said all the old credit card meters will be replaced with new solar-powered ones — with new technology.

“HPD actually can target the expired meters. So we’re hoping that we can also increase compliance of everybody to faithfully pay their parking charge,” said Roger Morton, director of the City’s Department of Transportation Services.

Drivers can insert a credit card like before, but now they can use a smartphone to scan a QR code on the meter screen and pay through the Park Smarter app. They will also allow customers to use Apple Pay and Google Pay.

“It’s not credit card only so you can you can still use coins on that and HPD will still have to, you know go around and collect the coin revenue,” Morton added.

Officials have said Park Smarter allows users to get real-time expiration alerts, see a map of available meters, and pay and extend parking remotely. Parking transaction history and email receipts can also be accessed via MyParkingReceipts.com.

HNN tried to use the new meters on the street and had some trouble scanning the QR code and seeing the full functionality on the app.

Morton said they are working through any bugs.

For more information, visit www.honolulu.gov/transportation/resources/parking.

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