One of the newer single space meters on Church Street in Decatur, Ga. Photo by Dan Whisenhunt

During the summer the city began pulling up its old-fashioned coin operated meters and replacing them with something much fancier.

The city’s new solar powered meters cover multiple spaces along streets in the city’s downtown. But there are also some traditional looking ones popping up, too. There are at least two single space meters in front of Decatur Presbyterian, and Decatur Metro noted a few days ago that there’s a single space meter on West Ponce.

Unlike the multi-space meters, the single space meters do not require customers to enter their license plate numbers. Multi-space meters can track vehicles even when they move to a different spot so people running errands around town won’t lose paid parking time if they move their vehicles.

City spokesperson Casie Yoder said the single space meters were part of the city’s original plan.

“You may recall,” Yoder said. “Way back when the new meters were being discussed that the plan called for multi-space meters (the solar power meters) for most areas, with single space meters in places where there is not a good grouping of several spaces together.”

Yoder also explained how the new single space meters work.

“The single space meter takes credit cards and coins and has the standard two hour limit,” Yoder said. “The difference between the single space meter and the multi-space meters is that you do not enter your tag number for the single space meters – you pay for the SPOT and if you move away from the spot before your time expires it does not move with you.”

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