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Ferndale: Free Parking Extended While Tweaking New Pay Stations

FERNDALE (WWJ) - Ferndale has extended free parking through March 25th after complaints about the new pay stations that replaced parking meters earlier this year. Mayor Dave Coulter says they've ordered more pay stations to cut down on the long lines. And the parking rates will be going back down.

"When we go live on March 25, we are going to have the old original rates -- one thing we also realized, we don't know exactly how much revenue this system will generate, so we're going to give it some time and find out just what kind of revenue we're collecting."

Mayor Dave Coulter admits he was taken aback about the storm that erupted when the city abruptly removed the old meters and put in new pay stations in January.

"The amount of comments we got was very surprising and part of that was it was in some really bad weather, some of the machines weren't working correctly and as it turns out, we've learned, we didn't have enough machines," said Coulter.

"Rather than just put our heads down and tell people to get used to it we put a stop to the system until we got everything in place."

Mayor Dave Coulter says the city will continue to offer free parking while they address the long lines and poor lighting at the new pay stations.

"We've extended it for another two weeks so we are not going to go live with our new system until Monday, March the 25th, because we've just ordered the new machines - they are coming in this week," he said. "We are also ordering lighting to go above the machines so folks don't have to fumble in the dark."

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