New parking kiosks and app are worse than old ones, some companies and visitors say

CARLISLE, Pa. (WHTM) – Neighborhood leaders have been touting the benefits of new parking kiosks and a related app coming soon, and no one disputes them: For example, you can use the parking you’ve already paid for anywhere in the zone.

But some businesses and patrons say the trade-offs more than offset the benefits – and businesses say it’s costing them money.

“We look at our customers. We see them parking. We know what they’re going to eat,” said Leah Mazias, who works with several generations of her husband’s family at the Hamilton restaurant. “We see them trying to use parking meters. They get upset. Then they get back in their car and drive away.”

Do you know what they’re going to eat? Yes, when customers came as long as Michael and Marilyn Lopato, who moved to Boiling Springs in 1974 and ate at Hamilton’s soon after.

They like the restaurant so much (it’s “like home,” Michael Lopato said) that they’ve resigned themselves to a new parking lot equipped with mid-block kiosks that accept credit cards, cash and coins, and a corresponding cell phone app, but they understand… why other people might give up.

“Sometimes they just don’t work – like if you typed in your license plate, some letters won’t come in,” Michael Lopato said. “We were told to just go to another kiosk. But…. you have to walk all the way to the corner across the street because you can’t cross the middle of it, go to the kiosk and then come back.”

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Mazias said there is no such thing as a great parking spot anymore because the closest spot to a restaurant requires walking half a block to the kiosk and back. An app can mitigate that, but some customers with technology difficulties can’t figure out how to use it, she said.

Solution?

“Go back to the meters,” Marilyn Lopato said, although both she and Michael Lopato were just as quick to say they knew that was unlikely.

Other business owners and patrons made similar comments on social media. But another man parked Monday told abc27 News that not only is he okay with the new system; he prefers it to the old one.

“The district recognizes the challenges some members of our community may face as we move from the traditional single-spaced counting system to a kiosk counting system,” Richard Juday, the district’s assistant manager, said in a statement to abc27 News. “Parking kiosks are widely used in the market and the borough is looking for positive solutions to help people with the new parking system as well as address any other concerns raised in our community.”

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