Smarter parking thanks to Smart Cards

Image by Geoff Marshall/TheDigitelImage by here.jpg

We had a brief write-up on the City of Charleston's new SmartCard parking system a couple of weeks ago, but we've been dying to go out and make a video about it ever since.

So we sent out our newest face -- Amanda -- to the streets of Charleston to see if the new way of paying for parking is all it's cracked up to be.

Check out the video above.

The smart cards costs $5 to begin with, but is yours to keep. You can charge them with up to $300 worth of credit at a time, and get refunded back any unsued credit when you return to the meter.

At the moment you can only buy them from the Department of Revenue Collections at 180 Lockwood Drive. The meter rate we should point out also stay the same (25 cents for 20 minutes) whether you're using coins or one of the new cards.

We bought a smartcard for real to use in the video, but it wasn't until the day after that our videographer Geoff Marashall got to use it for real -- He parked in a spot on Ogier Street -- only to find that the meter hadn't been converted, and was still cash only!

You can get lots more details on the program from the city's page on the program.

Here's a quick Google map we put together with the streets that accept smartcards highlighted in green.

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