Parking gets smarter

The city of Chico is nearly done installing 450 new “smart meters” capable of reading credit cards in the downtown area. The meters are located between First and Fourth streets and Salem and Wall streets.

The new meters will continue to take coin payment, and a fee of 35 cents will be added to credit card transactions “to cover the city's processing costs,” according to an Aug. 20 press release. Multispace credit-card-reading meters will also be installed in parking lots at First and Second and Wall streets in the next few weeks.

City staff anticipates that “there may be challenges as the new technology is deployed” and promises to work with “any member of the public who may be impacted by any such potential transitional issues,” the release reads.