HOW TO OPERATE MILWAUKEE'S NEW PARKING METERS

LUKE HANDED COOL RECEPTION

New Parking System Takes Some Getting Used To

By Michael Horne

It is not proving easy to get accustomed to LUKE. And the City of Milwaukee is having a hard time explaining him – or it.

“LUKE,” apparently an acronym for Largely Unfathomable Kind of Equipment, is the trade name of the new parking meter system installed this summer in downtown Milwaukee. It is manufactured by Digital Payment Technologies, a Canadian company.

The good news about LUKE is you can feed it with cash or plastic. Also on the plus side, once you find it, any LUKE machine will accept payment for any parking spot in the system. If you park four blocks away, and your time is about to expire, you can feed the LUKE at your front door. LUKE will also give you a receipt telling you when your spot expires, which is thoughtful and possibly useful for expense account purposes.

The bad news about LUKE is some people can’t understand how to use it, once they find it. (There is about one LUKE pay station per 11 parking spots.) These are also the folks who were mystified by ATMs, confounded by vending machines and perplexed by pay phones. (Paradoxically, they seem to have had no trouble learning how to use their “Promise Keeper’s Card” to operate the slot machines in the bingo hall.)

Yes, LUKE got his name from the character in a movie who chopped the heads off of parking meters. His name was “Cool Hand Luke.”

LUKE was short-lived in the metropolis of Bellingham, Washington, “It has totally failed,” the city’s parking manager said last year before ripping LUKE out of the streets. Merchants had complained that people were avoiding parking at LUKE spots, and that their businesses had lost significant money. (And this in a college town!)

Eugene Kane of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote a column about LUKE that received many responses from readers. But it seems that whenever the auto-dependent aren’t complaining about driving their cars, they’re griping about parking them, so this is no surprise.

For my part, I note the LUKE-bewildered, and have occasionally taken sympathy on their plight. Just this morning, outside George Watts & Son., two elderly women, parked, were about to drive their car to a street with normal meters since they hadn’t a clue about LUKE. I told the driver to note her location (space 400) and to go over to the LUKE station, insert her credit card, and pay for her space. “But I don’t want to use my credit card,” the woman said, horrified. Well, you can use your spare change, then, I said, and that comforted her. (You cannot use paper money in LUKE, even with parking at $1.00 an hour. But it will take dollar coins.)

I think LUKE would have got a better reception if the city had bothered to put up signs indicating how one might be able to locate the LUKE stations. (It is not enough that they are marked with a “P” in a circle, which is the worldwide standard to identify parking locations.)

However, if you would like a LUKE tutorial right at your desk before you face the big world outside, I have reprinted it below from an e-mail sent twice by the city yesterday. (They forgot the attachment the first time.)

Simply determine which of the 15 numbered instructions below apply to your personal parking profile, and follow the appropriate ones, in the proper sequence, until the desired result is met. Don’t forget to remember your parking space number, and please take your receipt, if one is printed. You will also need your eyeglasses, and a shade or an umbrella to reduce the glare so you can read LUKE’s liquid crystal display screen. Repeat every other hour, or more often in certain locations.

LUKE

THE MULTI-SPACE

PARKING METER

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Press the green “OK” button or any button on

the key pad to start.

2. Enter parking space number followed by the

green “OK” button.

3. Press “1” to “Purchase Time” to pay for a

parking space or press “2” to “Add More

Time” to pay for additional time for a space

you already paid for.

To Pay With Coin

1. Insert coins for the desired amount of time.

2. Press the green “OK” button to complete

transaction or the red “CANCEL” button to

cancel transaction.

3. Take receipt from lower window.

To Pay With Credit/Debit Card

1. Insert and remove credit card. Wait seconds

for processing.

2. Press “1” to add time desired (1 hour minimum)

or press “9” for the maximum time allowed.

3. Press the green “OK” button to complete

transaction or the red “CANCEL” button to

cancel transaction.

4. Take receipt from lower window.

FEATURES

1. Pay at any LUKE meter that is the most

conveniently located. Enter the parking space

number.

2. Accepts MasterCard/ Visa credit/debit cards only.

3. Accepts 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, or $1.00 coins.

4. Provides receipt.

5. For convenience, receipt includes time when

meter expires and space number.