Using your phone, not quarters, for parking

Wildwood New Jersey is experimenting with program that lets people avoid hunting down change when going to the beach.

Feeding the parking meter is just a phone call away for those seeking a spot in one New Jersey shore town.

Wildwood New Jersey has signed up with a company to offer the option of calling a telephone number to feed your parking meter. Katie Ferrara is the manager of the electronic meter project. She says it saves searching for quarters.

“It’s kind of like EZ Pass were you set up an account you pull up to a meter and you call the number and it will automatically start taking money from that account. You know this way you don’t have to put coins into the meter if you feed the meter and you come back earlier than what you fed it you don’t have to pay for that for the extra time if you used coins.”

Ferrara says parkers must either set up an account on-line ahead of time or do so over the phone. They would like to offering text message warnings for when your time is about to run out, but that won’t happen until next year.