Why did parking Downtown just get easier?

Cincinnati residents complained.

City Hall listened.

Effective Monday – 23 days after new meters were installed – two additional customer-friendly capabilities were added to parking meters.

Now customers can:

• Pre-Pay: People who want to park at a metered space prior to enforcement hours can now pay in advance. For example, a customer parking at 8 a.m. on Monday could pay for the meter's maximum two hours, but those two paid hours wouldn't begin until meter enforcement starts at 9 a.m. This feature is available in every neighborhood.

• Pay for extended hours: This permits customers to pay once and enjoy a later evening Downtown or Over-the-Rhine. A customer wishing to park at a location in the evening could pay for more than two hours. For example, a customer visiting a restaurant and attending a performance at 6 p.m. would pay for 3 hours, which would ensure their meter was paid until the 9 p.m. end time of meter enforcement for that day.

"In the coming months, the City of Cincinnati will use data and analytics to make further enhancements to the parking meter program, which will include the use of smart phone technology," said City of Cincinnati spokesman Rocky Merz.

Cincinnati City Councilman David Mann called for parking changes after complaints flooded city hall in the wake of stepped up enforcement and for the first time ever, night hours in Over-the-Rhine and the Central Business District.

At the beginning of the year the city activated 1,500 new meters that accept cards, replacing coin-only meters.

Increased hours and enforcement started at the beginning of the year. Although the meters have the ability to record parking for more than two hours and allow a person to feed the meter ahead of time, the city wasn't yet using those functions.

The city has about 5,000 meters, including 1,400 smart meters Downtown. It annually collects about $3.4 million in meter revenue and another $3.4 million in fines. The Fiscal Year 2015 budget calls for the city to collect $2 million more revenue from tickets.

Although it may not seem that way to people pulling into a city parking spaces, statistics show 10 percent fewer parking tickets were issued in the first two weeks of January compared to the same time in December 2014.