Meter Feeder (YC W16) lets you ditch coins and codes, pay for parking with GPS | Hacker News Reader

Meter Feeder (YC W16) lets you ditch coins and codes, pay for parking with GPS

techcrunch.com

31 pointsheezo16 comments

Wow, this is great - I started using Meter Feeder a few months ago in Pittsburgh. I'm sure Pittsburgh is similar to most of the country in that we've had no choice but to use antiquated meters. It really is one of those situations where since it's now easy, I've found myself always paying for parking, whereas before I skipped on payment more often than not.

Looking forward to watching Meter Feeder execute on its goals, and congrats on the acceptance to YC W16!

Thanks, Norman. We've recently rolled out to a few more areas around Pittsburgh. Looks like there are another five, in Southwester PA, switching to us over the next few months.

The only time I've ever had a parking ticket (80GBP) was in an area that only accepted payment via phone call.

I had no signal, so I decided to leave the vehicle and go to work, I'll pay for it when I get back, humans are generally reasonable folk, aren't they. Came back to a ticket and invested about an hour in trying to fight it before giving up.

Since then I am extremely skeptical of 'paying for parking' in general and have tried to find free bays. I'm willing to pay a few quid for parking, I'm not willing to risk a ticket (and the associated general angst at some bureaucrat having the power to arbitrarily steal money from me).

I'd appreciate a system that sent me a bill in the post for sitting in a spot and required payment within 2 weeks or something. Penalties for non-immediate-payment seem like an oddly antagonistic policy at this point, given that we have a nationwide database linking car plates to owners.

This is probably all different in the US, just adding my 2p. :)

Hi. I agree! Parking is a hassle everywhere, even in the US. Meter Feeder is working to challenge the pain points of parking and create a new and better way.

One of the goals of our system has always been to augment existing systems instead of replacing them.

- Dan, Meter Feeder CTO

Hi, I’m Jim the CEO of Meter Feeder. We are excited to announce our product and that we are participating in Y Combinator W16. My co-founder and I are passionate about the pains of parking. We want to create a solution that is easy and elegant for everyone. Please let us know if you have any questions.

You collect a lot of data about people - their location (and therefore travel patterns), license plate etc. What's your privacy policy with regards to location data collected? Will you disclose if your database is requested by the authorities? How long is the data stored for? Will you be monetizing that data? Your FAQ doesn't address this.

Great question. We only store the data the the municipality needs to enforce tickets. All personal data is stored directly on the phone.

How do you handle different rates for different zones? Does the city hand you the zoning information + coordinates? In general, I'm curious how you work with the various municipalities.

We work with them to set up the initial zones (GIS coordinates are easy to find online). And there is an administrative dashboard that we provide the municipal director of parking where they can adjust the rates. It usually takes about 10 minutes for one of our team members to set up a new city.

10 minutes? That's pretty impressive! Next question: Are you in Chicago?

Unfortunately, no. However, we are excited to move into all of the places that can't afford Park Chicago.

> You can easily extend your time whenever you want

The city will lose a lot of money with this. The amount taken in meters is a small fraction of what they make with tickets.

Actually, a counter example of this is when the City of Pittsburgh rolled out kiosks to accept credit cards. In the 2011 fiscal year, the Parking Authority earned $7.1 million from its metered parking spaces. In 2012, that amount climbed to $9.2 million, and in 2013, without December figures included, it increased to $12.2 million.

I forgot to add, PPA lost only $100K in ticket revenue.

What happens when the drivers don't have a mobile phone or app installed? Is the kiosk available?

Absolutely. We work with the current infrastructure. This means the coin based meters, or kiosks, etc.

Our goal is to keep their costs down, by integrating with whatever they have.

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