City of Vancouver to replace standalone street parking meters with integrated payment stations

Paying at individual street parking meters will soon be a thing of the past in Vancouver.

City hall is doing away with what it describes as “legacy single-space parking meters”.

These are standalone street parking meters where someone can pay with coin or over the phone.

The city wants to connect parking meters to payment stations that can process coin, credit card or phone payments.

Customers should not walk more than 50 metres to get to these payment stations.

Neither should they cross the street to get to one.

There are currently 11,500 metered on-street parking spaces managed by city hall.

The city anticipates the number to grow to 13,000 over the next two years.

Out of the 13,000 current and anticipated parking street parking meters, 4,500 are connected by technology to payment stations, and these are managed by the city.

City hall wants the remaining 8,500 spaces to be connected over the next three to four years.

To do this, Vancouver needs a supplier of parking meter equipment, and so it issued a request for proposals in September 2020.

Precise ParkLink Inc. was one of the companies that responded, and met the requirements of the city.

Alexander Ralph, director of supply chain management and chief procurement officer with the city, prepared a report to council.

In his report, Ralph sought council approval to authorize city staff to negotiate a contract for parking meter equipment with Precise ParkLife.

The five-year contract is worth $10 million.

“The City is currently in the process of transforming the majority of its legacy single-space parking meters to connected multi-space parking meter equipment (pay stations) to address issues related to maintenance, repair, limited payment options, and lack of communication ability,” Ralph wrote.

The city executive explained that the procurement includes “connected parking meter equipment to provide parking payment security, a variety of parking payment options for users, and parking technology that will enable the City to address demand-based pricing, occupancy, and compliance”.

Ralph’s report is included in the agenda of council on Wednesday (July 21).