Aspen Time

I've heard several individuals mention the start time of an event and then qualify the statement as either "Aspen time" or "real time".  As you might imagine, Aspen time runs a little late.

I don't think Aspen time applies to parking your vehicle on the street.  If you want to avoid a parking ticket in Aspen the trick is fairly simple. Move your car to the opposite side of town every two hours.  There are four parking districts in which there is both free and paid parking available. If you're in a free spot you must be gone in 120 minutes, or else you will get a ticket.  And you may not just move down the block, you must move across town or find a pay slot (I'll have to check on this, but I'm fairly certain that is how it works).

But here is the interesting part...

A few days ago Abe and I met a parking enforcement dude driving this seemingly mundane conveyance.  But notice the two gadgets mounted on the roof by the American flag?  Those are high-definition cameras which record images of every car the scooter passes, on both sides of the street.  It interprets every license plate as well as landmarks around the car.  An on-board computer then determines if the car has been in the same spot more than the permitted time period and if a violation has occurred the officer is alerted.  THEN, if it is a pay spot, he checks to see if a payment stub is on the car dash.  If there is no pay stub (they don't have a meter at every spot but rather there is one location on each block that takes your money and prints a stub which you then display on your dash) he has one more place to check.  You see, in Aspen you can pay for parking with your cell phone.  If you have paid the fee a text message is sent to a Blackberry handheld device which notes the car make, plate and time paid.  If your car is on that list you are in the clear, otherwise...

I suppose that is TMI (too much information) for some, but I found it all very interesting.  Aspen has a lot of nice community amenities for which I was wondering how funding was raised.  Sales tax is in line with other places we've been, ? property tax, lodging room tax? .... Abe suggested they probably generate a lot of revenue from parking fines.  Maybe he is right.

PS: The man said he can drive 25-30 MPH and the system still works perfectly, and emblazoned on the back of the scooter are the words: "The Enforcer".

PPS: The man was very nice, kind of proud of the whole thing.  He showed us the computer monitor which displayed side-by-side images of a car - one taken moments before we started asking our questions and one taken two hours ago.  He also showed us the handheld device with the list of cell-phone payment messages.  We saw him a little while later in another part of town and he waved to us.