Waldwick — The borough will replace the 40 coin-operated parking meters at the train station parking lot with card-operated meters to facilitate commuters’ daily park and ride commute.
According to Borough Administrator Andrew Tatarenko, the project to overhaul the parking meter technology in the train station lot was discussed and approved as part of the 2015 capital budget.
“The project itself was already approved a year ago in 2015 to go with the credit card machines and get rid of the coins,” said Tatarenko. “But, at the time, they were going to do one kiosk at each side of the train tracks.”
The original plan was to remove all single-space parking meters and install two parking kiosks, one on either side of the train tracks. The kiosks would accept credit cards and would print out tickets to be placed on the cars’ dashboards. The kiosks would eliminate the need to carry change and streamline the daily commute. But Tatarenko reviewed the project and suggested an alternative that would streamline it further.
“In my opinion, the kiosks where you get the tickets from are better suited for a parking garage,” said Tatarenko. “In our situation, cars go there in the morning, they all go there at once and stay there for 12 hours.”
Mayor Thomas Giordano concurred with Tatarenko’s assessment, saying that due to the daily morning rush there could potentially be queue lines to use the kiosks.
The new single-space smart parking meters, from IPS Group, will be installed at a cost of $20,000.
Tatarenko said they will most likely be installed this summer, when there is a lighter commuting schedule, with notifications to commuters being sent out at the end of spring.
The meters are expected to be fully operational by Labor Day.
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