A constituent of mine emailed me about why she had to pay to park in the “free” parking ramps in the downtown area. So, yesterday, I made a few phone calls, got and sent over 30 emails and ended up wasting at least an hour trying to figure out what happened. What I found out doesn’t quite come across in the Wisconsin State Journal article. Probably cuz the Mayor’s full-time spinmeister was hard at work, calling it merely a “wrinkle”. Too bad the reporters can’t talk to those who know what’s going on.
The original response I got from staff about why this person was charged was as follows:
This is a software issue. At a booth staffed by a cashier we are able to make the adjustment for snow days. If the customer exited before a cashier was on duty and used the ZEAG machines this is where the problem is–the Machines currently do not have the ability to adjust the fee in their software. We believe the machines have the ability to do it, but it requires a programming change by the front end software manufacturer (CTR). To date we haven’t been successful in getting them to address it. We are dropping this “software” company (CTR) and going directly with the equipment manufacturer (ZEAG) and it is on our list of things to be addressed by ZEAG. XXX will contact this person and straighten this out.
The second response I got from staff about why this person was charged was as follows:
It’s not quite as simple as David’s explanation below.
First, if our revenue equipment is working properly the people are charged the right amount. We have processed one small overcharge amount in this office since the first of these recent snowfalls.
When Dreckmann advises us of the snow emergency a PU employee needs to go to each facility and throw a switch to indicate a snow emergency at every entrance station. This triggers a special entrance ticket that is encoded as snow emergency. When the exit station equipment receives one of the specially coded entry tickets it knows to charge nothing four hours between 1a and 7a.
I think we could get into problems when folks enter before 1am or leave after 7am. While the revenue equipment should know how to calculate this our customers often think they should get free parking. If a cashier is present during the customer’s exit, the cashier will explain the payment system and make sure the automated revenue equipment has charged the right price. Every facility has large parts of the night that are unstaffed. If the customer enters before we have thrown the snow emergency revenue switch and exits before cashiers start work, the revenue equipment does not know to deduct the time between 1a and 7a. If a customers brings this to our attention we provide a refund.
I’ve spoken to George Dreckmann and he is going to modify his snow emergency material to make it clearer that customers must pay for parking time outside of 1a to 7a. Perhaps this will help.
In the mean time send all of the charge complaints to us and we will handle them individually.
Sounds like they knew there was a problem, but just didn’t worry about it and were just waiting for people to complain. And then they wonder why people don’t park in the ramps. If they tried it and they ended up paying would you do it again? Can’t we have a little more effort people? And couldn’t the city at least put up some signs explaining what people needed to do and give them the phone number if they had problems?
Plus, I’d be much more interested in what the increases in parking are closer to the more heavily residential neighborhoods such as the MATC/State St. Capitol ramp, McCormick/Capitol Square North and the Capitol Center/Overture ramp. And why isn’t the information about snow emergencies not available here? After 7 years on the council, it always amazes me when I have more questions than answers.
MOVING SNOW
Also, Paul Soglin seems to be getting the snow moved. Without asking, I received the following email from city staff yesterday:
Brenda,
Just a heads up that we will be removing snow from N. Franklin and N. Hancock between E. Washington and and E. Johnson St. on Thursday. We posted those streets for NO Parking and will be towing if they haven’t moved.
We already removed snow from about 12 blocks of E. Johnson St. on Monday 12/11.
More streets will be done in the future.
Too bad they didn’t talk to me about why those streets and why its not such a good idea to do two adjacent streets on both sides of the street on the same night. i.e. Where the hell do the cars park when there is already no place to park? And why only E Johnson, not E Gorham? I can’t imagine they’re going to get great compliance and then they can complain that getting people to move cars is a failure. Plus, this neighborhood just suffered through street construction and water main replacements all summer and all the screw ups and inconveniences that go along with that and it would have been nice to have been a little more sensitive to the needs of the neighborhood. Oh well . . . it’s just students that live there right? Not! And even if it is, they should get a little more respect. These types of attitudes and problems hardly encourage people to live downtown long-term.
