New parking meters on campus charge $0.25 per hour
New digital parking meters scattered around campus give students more bang for their quarter.
The Central Michigan Police Department purchased 100 digital parking meters the week before school started. Service Officer Mike Anderson said there are approximately 429 parking meters around campus.
The older mechanical meters cost 50 cents for an hour. The digital ones, however, are 25 cents for an hour.
“We needed to upgrade and get with the times,” Anderson said. “The other meters work for now, but they are 10 to 15 years old.”
Livonia sophomore Andy Clairmont said the new meters are a nice bonus.
“The old ones could sometimes be hard to read, so the digital meters make it much easier to see how much time you have left,” Clairmont said. “It was pretty cool when I found out that the new meters are cheaper, too.”
A limited number of meters were purchased due to budget constraints, Anderson said. Each mechanical meter costs $70, but the new ones cost $180.
“It’s up to the chief of police when we will be getting more digital meters. It all has to do with budget restrictions,” Anderson said.
The digital meters were purchased to cut down on the constant maintenance needed for the mechanical meters, Anderson said.
“The digital meters require less maintenance. We just have to change the battery every three years. With the mechanical ones, there are so many pieces inside that can break. Things do break,” Anderson said.
Anderson said the meters are currently in three parking lots around campus but, eventually, he wants to replace them all.
“There are meters in Lot 62 by the Student Activity Center, Lot 36 in front of Moore and then most are in the new lot where the old Washington Apartments used to be,” he said.
Trenton sophomore Kayla Schutt said she wishes there were more digital meters.
“I think the new meters were a good idea, but it’ll be nice when they are all digital. It’s going to be hard to find one of the new meters when there are so few,” Schutt said.
