More credit card friendly parking meters coming uptown

DDOT released a statement saying they are installing 1150 new parking meters that will accept credit cards.

“This is a next step towards a complete revamp of our parking system over the next 12 months,” said DDOT Director Gabe Klein.

The majority of these meters are expected to be downtown, where there is higher parking turnover.

With the Fenty Administration increasing the time you must pay to park until 10:00pm on many streets downtown, we think that credit card meters will make it much easier to get around Penn Quarter (who uses change these days?).

In the "near future," DDOT is expected to roll out a system that debits a device in your car for parking, similar to Arlington's iPark system.  That way, you don't pay for time after you've left the spot.

These new meters get the high tech improvements rolling.  “The new meters are also a piece of a comprehensive Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) architecture that that will tie together all of our assets with adaptive controls that change dynamically, and provide real time information to the public, and DDOT. From our signal system, to the Circulator Bus, to the parking system, all proactively communicating," said Klein.