Most people hate paying for parking and fiercely resist attempts to make them do so. I wonder how much of that resistance isn’t to cost per se, but rather to the annoyance of the process of paying.

One of my unpopular opinions is that I actively embrace paying for parking. I’m convinced that it shouldn’t be free, and that making it mostly free (and often mandatory to build) is disastrous public policy. Which is just to say that I’m a Shoupista. The High Cost of Free Parking is essential reading. Embrace Shoup and you get to feel good when you feed the meter.

What I don’t appreciate is the actual process of paying — the user experience of it. Even now that you can mostly pay with a credit card or an app, it’s still really annoying. You bend over and squint at the often defaced little screen and struggle to read the tiny low-contrast text. You get the little slip of paper and have to walk back to put it in the windshield, or else type the code for the spot into the shitty app.

It should work like this: the car knows where it is, and the transaction is automatic. You park, a timer starts running. You leave, you come back, you drive away, and your account is charged automatically based on the exact amount of time you parked. No guessing how long you’ll be there or futzing with the meter or kiosk. Like EZ-Pass. You get a statement at the end of the month, and if you don’t pay, you can’t renew your registration.

If it could be made to work this way, I suspect at least some resistance to Shoupthought would be abated. It also seems like enforcement and physical infrastructure could be significantly cheaper.

How could this work? Well cars are increasingly just laptops on wheels. They have GPS, they know exactly where they are. Software with well-defined hooks that parking providers can interact with could be made to be mandatory. This wouldn’t be easy, but I think it would be worthwhile. And if autonomous cars become the norm, won’t something like this be essential?