New parking meters do not work very well

The Gazette story (“C.R. parking core gets most attention,” Oct. 3) on the parking system, and particularly Jon Dusek's comments near the end, overlooked one glaring fact: The machinery doesn't work very well.

The very day the story ran, I found myself at a parking meter downtown. I put coins in the kiosk, which it refused to accept. They fell straight through to the change bin. I tried a credit card, which the kiosk asked me to insert and remove, insert and remove, insert and remove. I tried a different card. Same drill, although the kiosk did eventually tell me that it couldn't read the card. I tried coins again, and this time they worked. I was late to a meeting, but at least it didn't cost me a $7.50 ticket.

The kiosks play some variation on this theme at least half the time I try to use them.

I like the idea of the new system and everything claimed for it, and I am not a habitual complainer about metered parking in Cedar Rapids. I can usually find a space quite convenient to my destination and I am happy to pay the system's very reasonable rates - if only the machines would allow it. If the operators want to use the new parking system as an economic development tool, it needs to work as reliably as the low-tech meters it replaces.

Laura Behrens

Cedar Rapids