This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker was sporting a big smile as the bane of his administration — those darned blue parking kiosks — got a re-boot Tuesday.
The parking meters that people love to hate are still blue, but they have new user-friendly screens and updated innards that communicate beautifully with the data center that coordinates the 300 downtown kiosks.
At least, so the mayor said.
"This will kick off a new beginning for parking downtown," Becker said. "Hopefully, from this day forward, people will find [the kiosks] friendly and reliable."
So far so good, acknowledged Transportation Director Robin Hutcheson. Reports are good from motorists using the updated kiosks, she said. "This is a very good day in Salt Lake City."
Since their installation in 2012, the blue kiosks have been derided for being confusing, too dark to operate at night, not always accepting credit cards, and not providing proper time for payment, among other things. In summer of 2013, the entire system melted down for 10 days.
A leading critic of the system, Tribune columnist Paul Rolly, was invited by Becker to Tuesday's unveiling of the upgraded system.
"I started feeling sorry for the parking guys," Rolly said at the event, "because I was writing so many columns [on kiosk snafus]."
Rolly added that every time he called parking services to report another horror story, city officials were always polite.
More good news: The $600,000 makeover is paid for with contingency money from the original contract with Aparc Systems. Salt Lake City held back a portion of the $4.6 million contract to ensure the system worked as advertised.
Of course, it didn't operate as planned, the mayor conceded. But, he noted, his staff has been working tireless for the past 2 ½ years to fix it.
Finally, the city appealed to the San Diego-based IPS Group for help. The company's CEO, Chad Randall, said the new system has been proven to be reliable and easy to use.
That's a relief for Jason Mathis, the executive director of the Downtown Alliance business group. The blue kiosks have not been good for small businesses and restaurants, he said.
"Parking should be simple and easy and it hasn't always been," Mathis said. "This is a big deal and it really does impact small merchants more than it does The City Creek Center or The Gateway."