As someone who doesn't live in a large city and rarely visits one, parking meters are not something I have to deal with on a day to day basis. However, having lived in cities with parking meters, I know the issues all too well.

Parking meters in most places require you to carry change. The newer ones I've seen in Seattle will take credit cards, but that's only part of the issue. You have to keep track of when the meter is going to expire and make sure you can haul yourself back out there to feed the meter before the Meter Maid comes out and writes you a ticket.

The PhotoViolationMeter Solution seeks to change all that, or at least make it much easier. The parking meter takes many forms of credit cards, can call you when your meter is running low, give you a grace period when you run out, automatically charge you for overage, knows when the car moves (so the time can be reset), and, if you do mess up, provides photographic evidence of the infraction.

The other thing cool it does, which is buried down in one of the benefit pages, is that the parking meter can serve as a wireless hotspot for the city! Since the parking meter has to communicate information wirelessly with the city, it seems that adding public WiFi wasn't that big of a stretch.

Increases parking revenue by up to 5 times, easier for users, and provides WiFi. Yup, too perfect, thus we'll never see it. If you've seen one of these systems in play, or have any other thoughts about this, I'd love to see your comments.

Via The Bachelor Guy