The university could learn something from how the city does parking. The city charges $0.75 an hour; the university charges $1. The city doesn’t give tickets on weekends. The university gives free passes for some lots during weekends, but slams others. In the city’s most recent show of parking progress, officials last week unveiled plans to install two “pay-by-space” parking machines in city lots.Rather than asking people to feed coins into separate meters in front of a given parking space, these machines allow people to pay to park anywhere in a lot from one central terminal. And while the “pay-by-space” program is starting with just two machines to be placed at opposite ends of the City Hall parking lot, city councilmen said they’d consider expanding it across the city. This could one day mean that a person could park and pay by Starbucks, wander off to Potbelly’s, and feed the meter again from a parking machine located nearby.The implications would be even more profound if the university adopted a similar model. Imagine the convenience if the university set up parking machines at popular destinations – the Stamp Student Union, McKeldin Library, Byrd Stadium – and outside parking lots, which aren’t always located nearby. Feeding a meter would never again require a cross-campus jog.In theory, this would allow someone to park at a metered spot by Lot 1, go to McKeldin, and update the meter with a quick walk outside. On a campus where even Department of Transportation Services Director David Allen gets parking tickets – in 2005, parking records showed Allen received 11 violations on the five cars registered to his Ellicott City home; granted, at the time hehad paid for only one and voided or not paid for the rest – it would be a welcome change.And while one senior last year told The Diamondback he once received a parking ticket while fishing for change in his pocket, these parking machines accept paper money, credit cards and coins.Of course, they do come at a steep price – $18,000 a unit. And in the same week that university President Dan Mote acknowledged the possibility that the university might have to make budget cuts mid-year, we’re not saying that the university should install these machines next year – especially not after DOTS announced Thursday that it would be investing more than $4.5 million in eight hybrid buses.Nonetheless, any large-scale purchase requires a spending plan. Parking is an incessant headache for students and visitors, and if we’re going to see these machines on the campus anytime in the next few years, the university should start thinking about them now.