A new parking meter system on campus will text you when you’re running low on time and let you add more time with your phone.

The catch: The same system will make issuing tickets far easier for enforcement officers, who will be able to monitor the meters of entire parking lots from a single computer screen.

The $200,000 parking meter system is slated to be delivered today and start running by the end of the summer, according to Department of Transportation Services Director David Allen.

Allen said this would make enforcement much easier.

“You can look at the screen and see ‘here are the expired spaces,’ and then you go and check to see if there’s a car there. So if I’m an enforcement officer and I see a meter tick over from green to red, I might walk over there and check to see,” Allen said. “It should make it more efficient, but not by as much as you’d expect.”

But a representative from Digital Payment Technology, the meter’s Canada-based manufacturer, said the system would be a major upgrade.

“It’s way more efficient,” said Curtis Bateson, the company’s northeastern U.S. sales manager. “Rather than an enforcement officer walking up to each individual meter, he can access an entire lot at one time – if there’s a lot that has 200 cars in it, he can access the server and see which stalls are in violation.”

Allen added that the system, which can use one meter for dozens of parking spaces in an area, will be implemented anywhere there are more than five normal parking meters in a given area. They will also be used to eliminate the cashier system in the on-campus parking garages.

Junior education major Noah Drill said he felt the new monitoring system borders on exploitation.

“I think it’s a little ridiculous,” Drill said. “It’s like a police officer that sees there’s five minutes left on a meter and just waits there for it to run out.”

Junior electrical engineering major Avisha Nessaiver disagreed.

“I’d say overall, it’s a better system. It’s ideal that you can add time remotely,” Nessaiver said. “You might not be able to get away with as much, but in the end it will probably end up saving you money.”

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