Parking meters have been used extensively in this country and around the world in an effort to alleviate parking problems in congested urban areas. The first parking meters were installed in Oklahoma City, Okla. because downtown workers parked on downtown streets all day, and left no parking spaces for shoppers and visitors to the central business district. Soon the municipalities learned that charging a parking fee could also generate revenue for the town coffers. From that early beginning, the use of parking meters by municipalities, colleges and universities, and private parking facilities has increased to the point that, in the United States today, millions of parking meters are currently in use.
The first parking meters were mechanical and powered by a clock-type mainspring, which required periodic winding, maintenance, coin collection, and so on. Honor-based systems have also been widely used, such as giving the patron an envelope for the parking fee. Honor-based systems are inexpensive to install and do not require electrical power. However, these honor systems suffer from the disadvantage of not having any verification methods and they may be abused by a dishonest person. Other prior art parking fee collection systems have employed an unattended payment station where the parking patron deposits the required fee in an armored box, or perhaps an armored box with a numbered slot corresponding to a numbered parking spot. One problem with prior art armored box systems is that they require manpower to travel to the collection box, empty the collection box, and count the deposited money to ensure that the patron has paid for the occupied parking space. Such armored box systems could readily be abused by an inaccurate or dishonest coin collection. And requiring the coin collector to travel to multiple collection boxes may also include the risk of robbery. Recently, industry has also developed a number of sophisticated electrical or electronic parking meters that perform numerous functions such as accepting credit cards or smart cards, calculating the parking fee, issuing a receipt, printing a parking ticket in the case of overdue payment, and sensing whether the parking space is still occupied. Yet, prior art parking systems still suffer from a number of shortcomings, limitations, and disadvantages.
Despite these advances in parking meter technology, collection and enforcement of the parking fee is still a time-consuming and labor-intensive necessity for any parking system. The time-consuming and labor-intensive enforcement activity usually takes place after the parking fee is overdue and the parking violation has already taken place. Current parking fee collection systems cannot notify the parking patron that the purchased time period will lapse, unless the patron stands nearby the parking meter and views the available time on the parking meter. There is no currently available parking system that notifies the parking patron that the purchased parking time will expire before the parking violation takes place. Thus, there has been a long-felt need for a parking system that alleviates the shortcomings, limitations, and disadvantages of parking fee collection and enforcement by providing the parking patron with a pre-violation overdue notice.