“I think they’re beautiful,” Janette Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner, said of the new devices, which feature digital screens and colorful buttons. She laughed: “I mean, maybe I’m just a transportation expert at this point, but I think they’re sleek.”

At 69 inches tall, the new meters “are designed with the environment in mind,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said. A solar panel sits atop their blue head. With no moving parts, there are fewer chances for malfunction, and the Wi-Fi connection allows the city to remotely set special rates and times.

“It’s much better for customers, and for the management of our streets,” Ms. Sadik-Khan said.

The elimination of the free-standing meters also means the end of firmly delineated parking spaces. With the meters no longer denoting each spot, drivers can fill up a parking lane as they see fit, whether efficiently or inconsiderately. Still, drivers may also find that there are more spaces in the first place: Mr. Schwartz estimated that the lack of defined lines would create 10 to 15 percent more parking spaces in the city.

There is also, of course, the issue of revenue. Multispace Muni-Meters, versions of which have been on some streets since 1996, issue a receipt that a driver places on the windshield. When the car leaves, so does the receipt, so there is no extra time left over for the next driver. The new machines also include a button that lets drivers automatically pay for the maximum time allowed.

Even after Manhattan is made meterless, about 43,000 single-space meters will live on for a year or so in the other boroughs. The city will spend $34 million to install the new Muni-Meters, which cost $4,392 apiece, or about eight times as much as their predecessors.

Crews have been removing about 500 meters a week from the streets. The uprooted meters are hollowed out and deposited beneath an on-ramp to the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, where they will be stored until they are disposed of or auctioned off. The meter graveyard has a ghoulish quality: as steel poles poked out from bags like animal bones, surrounded by smashed and dismembered meter heads, flies buzzed about the meter carcasses — some with coins lying unretrieved inside.