Solar parking meters

By: Ethan K.

Boston will soon be installing solar parking meters in the city...why? Apparently, emptying 8 million dollars worth of quarters a year can be a grueling task. That is about 32 million quarters a year. So how will these solar power parking meters solve the coin issue? These meters will be powered by solar energy and have credit card processing capabilities. This will greatly reduce the amount of coins shoved into them each day. They will still take coins, of course, but the city's hope is that they will be lower maintenance due to the solar powered credit card processors. These parking meters will print out little receipts with a time stamp that would be placed on the car's windshield. So my question is, whay happens to the receipts that are printed out? Where are those going? Most likely, they will get crumpled up and tossed to the ground.

Now the city trash disposal will spend more time picking up little parking receipts that are blowing all over the city. Okay, I guess it won't be that bad, but the upside is that it will make parking a breeze. Merchants along the four block section of Newbury Street, where these solar parking meters will be placed, are excited about making parking easier. "This is a new era in parking in Boston," Thomas J. Timlin, Boston's transportation commissioner, told The Boston Globe. "It is the biggest step since the city first purchased meters so long ago."

Good for Boston...when people start to realize that solar power is capable of handling small tasks, we can start to change the way things are done. Solar energy may not power entire cities yet, but it sure can handle a credit card processing, parking meter.