by Allan Appel | Jan 11, 2011 3:21 pm

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Posted to: Transportation, Downtown

Certified male image consultant Ann Lindsay was parking on Chapel on her way to pick up a tasteful item at Enson’s for a client. She was low on change. So she was thrilled to find out she didn’t need any: the first group of the city’s new parking meters accepting credit cards had just been installed.

At 10 a.m. Tuesday crews from the city Department of Transportation, Traffic, and Parking were installing 48 of the new meters along Chapel between College and York. An hour earlier they had done the same in front of the shopping area on Broadway.

They simply beheaded the old meters, installed the new mechanism.

Then with a special adhesive against the icy weather, and sealed it up. Voila, plastic parking has arrived in New Haven.

The owner of Seychelles boutique, Pansy Blake, was so pleased that her customers no longer had to risk getting tickets if they didn’t have a pound of quarters with them that she waved to the acting head of Transportation, Traffic, and Parking, Jim Travers.

Then (at a reporter’s request) she came out to mark the moment and say thanks to Michael Goodhue and Lequane Gormany, of the meter division for their installation work.

“Sometimes while the customers are [in] asking for quarters, they could get a ticket. Definitely this is an improvement,” said Blake.

Travers, said the pilot was in response to local merchants’ requests for such help, especially as many non-New Haveners don’t have the Elm City I.D. card or a pound of quarters on them.

Or as Ann Lindsay put it: Insufficient change had always “limited my time spending money in New Haven. And that’s the point.”

Click here for a fuller story on the features of the new meters, created by the IPS Group of San Diego.

They include a solar-powered back-up to batteries, and the ability to change the settings on the meter or to determine if there’s a malfunction, all remotely, which will save a lot manpower hours.

The meters will continue to accept coins and now Visa, Discover, and MasterCard credit cards, at increments of a one dollar minimum.

Also, if you punch in more than you need, there’s a feature so that you can dial back to the lesser preferred amount before you complete the transaction.

The pilot project goes on for 90 days. During that time the Elm City I.D. card will not be accepted in the new meters for reasons of programming, Travers said.

If the pilot proves successful, and more new meters are installed, they all will be outfitted to accept parking moolah off the city’s card.

IPS’s Drew Stone said his company recently installed 10,000 such meters in L.A. and 5,000 in San Francisco.

“Do you know how many traffic tickets I’ve gotten by [being late just] ten minutes? This is super,” said Lindsay as she walked into Enson’s.”