Pay stations vs. parking meters

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Minneapolis just converted all the parking meters in uptown to pay stations, and that's been the case in downtown for well over a year now. No doubt the eventual goal is to make the entire city as such as effectively retire parking meters.

Pay stations have a few obvious downsides like being kind of confusing to people not familiar with them (not a big deal to locals, but I bet most people who park in such places are visitors and tourists), and the fact to use one you may have to walk almost block while remembering a five digit number (not hard to us maybe, but think of olds), but of course you never have to worry about carrying around spare change with them when you can just use a credit card. And they get around the issue of not having the time remaining on the pillar by giving you a receipt with your expiration time. I think the adjustment will be kind of tricky, but well worth it in the long run.