They said the same thing a few weeks ago after the tropical storm remnants blew through. It's going to be *another* month?

Wow, how ironic: I have been cursing the parking payment equipment at the BWI Rail Station for years for being so cranky and out of date. The same "Federal APD" brand equipment at the station is also used at the BWI garages...the MTA and MAA must have gotten a bargain basement low bid special on this junk:

• All other modern parking systems let you pay with plastic by inserting your card upon entry and, provided you use the same card upon exit, you're automatically charged. No waiting in endless lines at the vending machines when you're trying to get home, no pesky paper ticket to keep track of, "greener" due to the lack of paper tickets, etc.


• The machines have a "receipt" button that provides no feedback to the user as to whether it was pressed. Don't press it fast enough or exactly at the right moment, and you don't get a receipt. Cripes, I'm an engineer, and I'm unable to get a receipt 25% of the time. Try explaining that to your accounting department.


• The machines are so user unfriendly that paper instructions are taped here, there, and everywhere on the face of the machines. It looks absolutely ridiculous. Steve Jobs would have a coronary if he saw them. All modern systems I've encountered have full-color LCDs, sometimes even with touch screens.

COMMENT: Been there, used the machines (at least when I could find one working). They're obsolete, no doubt.

I'd like to know who the traffic engineer who posted above is, and why they only reported half the story?

I've always paid by credit but it sucks for people paying cash that they can only do that at the exit. How much time did it take them to fix that?

J