A bumper crop of new parking meters has appeared in downtown Red Bank.

What’s Going On Here? Read on. 

New meters on Monmouth Street, above, and Broad Street, at top of page. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)

The solar-powered devices are replacing all on-street parking meters in the business district.

In March, the council authorized spending $213,000 on about 250 new meters to collect revenue on 452 metered on-street parking spaces. The cost is to be covered entirely by parking utility revenue, town officials said.

The purchase was made under a $3.2 million bond approved last year that also covers the costs of new kiosks for parking lots, reconstruction work on the White Street and East Side parking lots, and the construction of a new parking lot at Marine Park.

The new devices will accept payment via the mPay2Park phone app now used to connect with kiosks in the municipal lots east of Broad Street. They’ll also take coins, non-pin debit cards and credit cards, with “contactless” payment familiar to users of Apple Pay and similar credit-card linked cellphone systems as an option.

There’s no definitive word yet on when the downtown visitors, who haven’t had to feed meters through the four-month-old COVID-19 crisis, will have to again pay for parking.

Borough Business Administrator Ziad Shehady told redbankgreen July 17 that officials “are hoping to have them go live within a week of installation being completed.” But no completion date was provided.

Meantime, the council has not authorized a change in parking rates, which remain at $1.50 per hour on streets, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days a week, and $1 per hour in parking lots.