Solar Parking Meters

It's not something you often think about, but on-street parking can be hard on the environment too even though your car is off and not moving. Fluids dripping from cars can pollute stormwater. Exhaust pollutes the sidewalk areas where people are walking. Regulating parking to ensure that it is safe and fair requires our staff to drive.

We are working to cut the greenhouse gas emissions associated with maintaining on street parking in our city. Our parking personnel are being switched to alternative fuel and electric vehicles. We've rolled out Pay by Phone, which has a side benefit of minimizing the number of times that a person needs to relocate his car. And, we're experimenting with solar.

Many of our parking meters now run off solar power. Whether on street or in a garage, our vision is a parking system with zero emissions.