The Kiosks are Coming, the Kiosks are Coming!

A is coming soon to a Haddonfield parking space near you.

The only remaining questions seem to be: Will it be the thinner-looking gray one with the digital display, the sleek black one seen in Collingswood and much of Philadephia, or even another brand that’s not yet on the radar screen?

The quest for answers to some of these questions is scheduled to begin Tuesday when the borough commissioners are expected to approve a measure to accept bids from parking kiosk companies to install and help maintain up to 19 of the new machines on selected streets and parking lots throughout Haddonfield.

The machines could cost as much as $12,000 each, but are expected to increase parking revenues and decrease the costs of maintaining meters and collecting fees. The revenue increase is expected to come from motorists no longer being able to take advantage of existing time on a meter. No increase in parking fees has been announced.

The borough has budgeted over the last two years to install the kiosks in local public parking lots and on Tanner Street in the historic district. The kiosks will cover more than half of the borough’s more than 900 parking spaces. The historic and business district along Kings Highway will remain regulated by parking meters at each available space. 

Some borough business owners had expressed concerns about customers having to walk to a kiosk instead of using a 12-minute grace period by pushing a button on the meter. The kiosks allow no grace period.

The kiosks have been a hot-button issue locally, not so much because of the grace period but rather because of the potential impact on the borough's image.

“I don’t want to be blamed for messing up our town with parking kiosks that are big and bulky, that people don’t like,” said Mayor Tish Colombi during a one-and-a-half-hour discussion at a borough commissioners meeting last week about how the kiosks will look.

That discuss led to the distributors of two of three suppliers the town is eying to bring their machines to the corner of Chestnut Street and Lincoln Avenue on Friday afternoon for borough officials to see how they actually look on the street.

Machines by Global (the gray machines) and Metric (sleek, black machines seen in Collingswood and Philadelphia) were on display Friday. A third distributor, Cale, did not display a machine.

Officials expect the first machines to be installed on Tanner Street before the end of August.