Editorial Notebook: Train station parking system derails irate editorial writer, but city calms her down

I missed my train at the Sacramento train station the other day. I arrived in plenty of time. What tripped me up was the new high-tech parking lot pay machine.

I couldn't figure out how to operate the darn thing. By the time I got it right, my train had left.

I was going to write a rant about my experience, but city parking officials talked me out of it. Here's why.

For the vast majority of drivers who pass through this lot every day -- the 1,000 or so who are picking someone up or dropping them off -- the city's new system works very well.

For these people, there are no tickets to take and no gate to enter. In fact, the pick-up and drop-off crowd don't have to interact with a machine at all. Neither do monthly parkers, the regular Amtrak commuters who occupy approximately half the 353 parking stalls.

The city's new gateless ticketless system virtually eliminates the massive traffic jams that made the train depot's parking lot famously dysfunctional in the past, and that's good.

But for poor chumps like me, first-time or infrequent users, parking at the train station is counterintuitive.

Parkers are supposed to pay for parking when they arrive, not when they leave. This means you really have to pay attention -- take note of your stall number before you leave your car. Read and follow carefully the confusing instructions on the pay machine.

If you pay with a credit card, as 80 percent of customers do, there's a pause while the machine dials up your bank for authorization.

The night I was there, my card was declined, which I assumed was a glitch. So I went through the process again. I was declined again.

By then I was beginning to panic.

My train was about to leave and a line was forming behind me. I fumbled for cash but the machine wouldn't take cash, either.

Finally I read the paper notice taped to the bottom of the machine. I was parked in an ineligible spot, in a spot that was set to be restriped the next morning. That's why the machine wouldn't take my card or my cash.

So I moved my car and paid again. By the time I had done all that, my train was long gone.

I fault the city for not having a parking attendant there to help me and other confused customers that night.

But, to the obvious question: Why not have people pay as they leave the lot, when they are not rushing to catch a train? -- the city has a reasonable answer. Such a system would require the city to erect ticket dispensers and gates again, impeding drop-off and pick-up traffic and recreating the massive traffic jams that plagued the old system.

So, on balance, the new system is a lot better than the old. Still, it needs improvement -- better signage, better instructions on the pay machines and someone available at all times to help befuddled customers like me.

-- Ginger Rutland

grutland@sacbee.com