Don’t be surprised if you see people tinkering with the old parking meters around Mar Vista this week. The City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is finally replacing those coin-operated meters with new smart meters that will accept credit cards, debit cards and gift cards in addition to coins.

Charmine Solla of LADOT’s meter operations division told Patch the switch over is fairly simple. Only the internal mechanism and the top dome of the existing parking meters need to be replaced.

Many of the parking meters in Mar Vista are often out of order, requiring people to call LADOT and report the broken meter. Legally, parking officers can still give tickets to people parked at failed meters. However, if you have called in advance to notify the city, you can fight the ticket.

The new meters, designed by the San Diego-based IPS Group, Inc, will eliminate this problem. Not only will drivers no longer have to store up their quarters for the parking meters, they’ll be able to keep receipts (for tax purposes).  The meters, which will take any card with a MasterCard, Visa or American Express logo, will use wireless communication to report their status and activity back to LADOT staff and can send text alerts to instantly report jams to parking meter technicians in the field.

According to a LADOT release, vandalism is the number one reason many parking meters are broken. LADOT has now instituted fines of up to $1000 and or/up to one year in jail in an effort to stop people vandalizing the new meters. All parking meter vandalism and other meter-related issues should be reported by calling 3-1-1.

Solla said to date, 16,300 meters have been upgraded throughout Los Angeles.  Mar Vista has 200 meters, all of which, she said, will be replaced this week. Installation is expected to be completed by Friday April 8.

For more information on the meters, click here.  

A diagram of the new meters with information on how to operate them is in the PDF box to the right.

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