City parking garages now using surveillance tech to collect fees

Metropolis Technology, a young AI start-up that uses video to capture license plate numbers, took over 4,000 garages last year.

A new video license plate reading system to collect parking fees went live at the city’s Market and Water Street parking garages on Tuesday.

Late Friday, Charlottesville announced that its downtown parking garages on Market and Water Street would be switching on Tuesday to a video license plate reading system to collect parking fees.

Wait, what? Didn’t the city just decide not to move forward with the Flock camera system over concerns about data collection?

“There are really two companies, one’s Palantir and the other Peregrine, which is an offshoot of Palantir, that seem to be developing techniques for synthesizing literally millions of data points about millions of people,” Councilor Lloyd Snook told WINA news radio. “We don’t need that kind of centralization of the data.”

However, a company called Metropolis Technology, which uses AI technology to collect data on millions of people, just took over our two city parking garages.

“…residents and visitors will be able to enjoy an easy experience where their vehicle becomes their parking pass,” the announcement eerily declared. “Metropolis technology will handle the rest, eliminating wait times and equipment failures.”

While the plan for this was discussed at a Charlottesville City Council meeting in June, there was no vote or public discussion, and it went unreported by the local media. SP Plus, the company that managed and ran the garages, was acquired by Metropolis Technology last year and was switching to its new system. Last week, signs went up in the garages reminding long-term parkers to sign up with Metropolis, and there was apparently a Q&A session on Wednesday at CitySpace, but few people seemed to be aware that the change was taking place.

“I’ll be interested to see how this works in practice,” wrote planning commissioner Rory Stolzenburg in response to the news, wondering if there would still be gates. And if so, would people who didn’t register get stuck there?

“Yes, there will be gates and an attendant will be available at the exit gate to assist if needed,” says city economic development director Chris Engel, who briefed council on the plan in June. The system can also handle parking validation and accommodate those taking advantage of free parking hours, but people still need to sign up and/or hand over their license plate and credit card information. Many of those questions are answered on the “how it works” page that the city put up for the new system.

At the time, Engel knew there would be pushback.

“So, there will be a moment when the change comes where it’ll be one of those who moved my cheese moments,” Engel told councilors. “And so everyone involved will be gnashing teeth and not be happy.”

And pushback there was.

“This is a really bad idea,” said technologist Waldo Jaquith in response to the news. “ To park downtown in Charlottesville, people will need a credit card and a phone on which they can install an app. Unbanked? Sorry, can’t park. Don’t have a phone that can install this app, or not comfortable doing it? Sorry, can’t park. These are city-owned garages!”

“Think this qualifies as a local incidence of enshittification,” responded local business owner ‪Peter Griesar‬.

In June, Councilor Natalie Oschrin wondered what would happen with the information that is collected. Is it stored? Deleted? Is it recorded and stored for studying things?

“Details we need to clarify,” Engel responded.

Those details are pretty clear in the company’s privacy policy, which describes the numerous ways your personal information is used. Indeed, the story behind Metropolis is about how and why a 6-year-old start-up was able to buy SP Plus, a more than century-old parking company, for $1.8 billion last year. That’s because Metropolis doesn’t see itself as a company that just operates parking lots. No, it’s creepier than that. They see themselves as an AI tech company pioneering checkout-free transactions everywhere you have to stop and pay for something. Its parking play should be obvious. Virtually overnight, the company acquired 4,000 parking locations (they had 40 locations early last year) from SP Plus, and then simply started implementing their camera-based ticketing systems without having to convince garage owners to use them. Metropolis now has an estimated 50 million users.

Obviously, Metropolis, as an AI company, is going to be collecting data on its users and trying to extract value from it.

Just last month, the company secured $1.6 billion in additional funding to expand the use of their tech at gas stations, restaurant drive-thrus, hotels and office buildings.

“With this new capital, we’re continuing to scale our platform and forge the foundation of the Recognition Economy, building a new paradigm for how AI is deployed in the real world,” said Alex Israel, CEO and co-founder of Metropolis, in the deal announcement.

However, hundreds of real-world reviews of the company on sites like the Better Business Bureau and trustpilot describe people being charged for parking somewhere they didn’t park, getting bogus fines ( “I received a “Parking Notice” from Metropolis for $10 plus a $54.50 “Notice Fee” stating that I failed to pay for parking.”), monthly users getting double-charged, being billed for parking that was validated months later (” I received a notice in the mail charging $20 for the parking and $45.25 for the notice fee.”), and non-existent customer service, and unreliable internet making it impossible to pay.

In addition, the company is facing a number of class action lawsuits for overcharging people and mishandling personal information.

“The problem with the system, as innovative as it might be, as convenient as it might be, and it certainly sounds that way,” says attorney Alex Brown, an attorney for a Texas law firm that filed a class action lawsuit against the company, “....it’s actually designed to extort extra fees beyond your parking fee.”

Brown says one plaintiff was charged $5 for parking, but the violation charge was $70.25. Metropolis also sends notices that threaten to tow or boot your vehicle if fines aren’t paid. Indeed, what’s been particularly galling about this technology is that it’s been a boon to towing companies, already seen as predatory before they had this new tech, which automates towing requests and helps them locate and track vehicles.

Similar frustrations have been noted with the use of ParkMobile (which the city used for a time but stopped over concerns about how it was functioning) at UVA and other places.

Of course, some are going to find the new tech convenient, but many others are going to stop using the garages, either because they aren’t tech savvy, don’t want to bother using their phones to park, or have privacy concerns. Also, as some have noted, what’s the real benefit here? That we get to park without having to take a ticket? Was that really so burdensome?

As one local observer wrote:

“Dear City of Charlottesville, no thank you. Stop attempting to normalize surveillance capitalism under the guise of convenience. You’ve been drinking too much of the consultant koolaid.”