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Pay Your Parking Ticket by Smartphone?

Columbia, S.C., plans to use new Motorola hand-held units and T2 Systems Inc. software to send meter violation tickets to a cloud-based system in real time.

Parking meter violators in Columbia, S.C., will have the option of paying their tickets online or from smartphones by next summer if City Council on Tuesday approves a $107,000 higher-tech system.

The new system is to be expanded even more to allow motorists to pay by phone for a parking space in city garages for special events such as at Colonial Life Arena or for a function at the convention center, parking services director John Spade said.

“The technology is being used by several valet companies in Columbia,” he said Monday of the event parking feature.

Currently, Columbia’s meters do not offer online or a pay-by-phone features, he said.

The city issued 143,836 parking tickets during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2014, and violators paid $1,987,323, Spade said. Parking enforcement workers – not police officers – wrote 95 percent of those tickets.

Asked whether the new system will produce more tickets because of streamlined technology, Spade said, “They’ll be writing the tickets at the same speed as they do now.”

“It’s going to offer citizens a lot more choice both to pay for tickets or for parking services,” Spade said of the upgrade. Once fully installed, violators may pay by text, laptop, voice commands or apps – even from flip phones, he said.

Unlike the city of Greenville, however, Columbia’s newer system will not allow violators to appeal a ticket electronically yet.

Capital city parking enforcers have been equipped for about six years with 17 hand-held units that allowed them to record tickets in a server at the end of their shifts, Spade said. If a violator chooses to pay a ticket that day at collection sites, such as the city offices on Washington Street, there is no official record of the ticket, he said. City employees have to create separate, temporary tickets and payment records, then match that data to the electronic record from the hand-held units.

The new Motorola hand-held units and T2 Systems Inc. software will send the tickets to a cloud-based system in real time and keep up with the vehicle and its owner.

Current hand-held units are wearing out, so the city is seeking to replace them with an equal number at a price tag of $51,893, while the software will cost $54,644, Spade said.

Motorists likely will not notice any difference in the tickets they find tucked under the windshield wiper. “It’s basically a specialized smartphone with a printer connection through Bluetooth,” Spade said of the printout from the new devices.

Spade’s counterpart in Greenville, Dennis Garrett, said parking enforcers there have been able to upload tickets as they write them for about four years.

That process also allows violators to pay through the Internet without having to make a trip to parking services offices downtown, he said.

Unlike Columbia, Greenville has no parking meters, just limited-time parking that ranges from 30 minutes to two hours, Garrett said.

Also unlike Columbia, Greenville motorists can appeal a ticket through their smartphones and wait for the city’s decision.

Spade said the law in the capital city requires that tickets be appealed to municipal court. Council would have to change that ordinance before the technology upgrade could be used to ask for a review of a ticket, he said.

©2014 The State (Columbia, S.C.)