Tired of digging into the cupholder for that lone coffee-encrusted quarter to feed the parking meter? Or asking your surly teenage son to give up the coin in his grubby pocket?

    It’s the 21st century, baby. You’re living in a cashless society. You don’t need that quarter for the meter – at least in many parts of Colorado Springs.

    The city has 2,415 on-street parking meters. Last year, it retrofitted 850 in the downtown core to accept what are called Easy Park passes.

    By the end of April, the city will have converted 850 more to accept the prepaid parking passes. Most of those meters are just outside the downtown core, but 140 are in Old Colorado City. Those meters began accepting Easy Park passes Friday.

    Next year, as funding permits, the city will finish its plunge into cashless parking by converting the remaining 715 meters, mostly north of Boulder Street.

    Greg Warnke, parking administrator for Colorado Springs, said converting all city meters to accept parking passes will cost about $200,000, an expense to be covered by parking fees.

    Warnke said the system is a recognition “we’re moving away from cash to a cashless society.”

    He said the passes should make parking more convenient and save people a bit of money. That’s because card users are only charged for the amount of time they’re parked – none of that irritating 15-minutesleft-on-the-meter thing.

    It also eliminates the dread that the meter will run out before the driver returns – the meter automatically gives motorists the full amount of parking time.

    Most city parking meters allow either one- or two-hour parking, but 332 allow parking up to four hours. Most of those are near the Municipal and El Paso County courthouses, with several on the fringe of downtown.

    None of the Easy Pass meters, though, accept another swipe of the card beyond the maximum parking time.

    Despite the advantages, Warnke acknowledged there’s still a lot of people fishing for coins in the city. In the first eight months of the program, card sales raised about $35,000, about 2 percent of the parking system’s 2007 revenue.

    The city’s meters generate about $2 million a year in revenue; the city’s parking garages an additional $1 million. The parking system operates on those revenues, not tax dollars.

    Warnke reckons the upfront costs of the conversion eventually will pay off.

    He said the city expects there will be less maintenance and manpower needed to service meters once drivers abandon coins. The city also pays a nice fee to the bank to process about $2 million in coins a year, and that cost should drop.

    Warnke said he expects the system will one day collect 50 percent of its meter revenue from cards.

    “When that’s going to happen, I don’t know,” he added.

    The conversion of a meter requires just a few minutes, as workers install a small, battery-operated card reader into an existing USB port in the head of the meter. The conversion was possible because the city scrapped its old-school crank-handled meters more than five years ago for digital meters.

    The cards can be purchased with $10 to $100 worth of parking and reloaded in $10 and $20 increments up to $100 at three kiosks downtown and one in Old Colorado City.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0197 or bill.mckeown@gazette.com 

Dr. Amilu Rothhammer with physical therapist Jim Cadwell at her recent retirement party at Penrose Hospital. He gave her the “Oil of Old Age” gag gift. Cadwell worked with Rothhammer for 32 years at Penrose Hospital. Photo by