Wednesday, August 22, 2012

It Ain't Free Groceries For a Year, But It's Better Than Nothing

Posted By on Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 3:30 PM

There's suddenly a reason to go out of your way to find a metered parking spot at the University of Arizona. That is, besides visiting the campus on lunch break to take in the ... scenery.

Little more than a year after installing solar-powered parking pay stations, the UA's Parking and Transportation Services office says they're close to logging the 250,000th customer transaction for parking in one of the 450 spots that are covered by these stations.

And to celebrate this, um, milestone, the person who swipes their credit card, their Cat Card or uses their UA parking app (yes, there actually is an app for that) to make this quarter-millionth transaction will get a prize. Of some sort.

“We’ll probably give that person a coupon for free metered parking," associate director of operations Mark Napier said in a press release.

Now, the trick is trying to figure out just when that big-time transaction will go down. The UA estimates it will happen in "late August," but with classes set to start, the likelihood of finding a parking spot during the day gets a heck of a lot harder.