Vandalism has plagued downtown Eugene parking meters since early 2023. It’s become so prevalent that the city is converting the damaged meters to credit card only until a better solution becomes available.
Jeff Petry, the city's curbside parking director, said initially, people were picking the locks to get at coins in the meters. Then, they started breaking the doors off the coin vaults. By last summer, meter heads were being cut off altogether, and about 600 of the city’s 1,000 downtown parking meters had been vandalized.
“We made a decision that we could not keep replacing the vault doors that were not successful in keeping people from accessing the coins inside," he told KLCC. "So what we have temporarily done is we’ve removed all the vault doors and blanked off the option to put coins in, right now.”
Petry said the city is putting orange stickers on each meter, indicating that coins are no longer accepted. He said some garages and parking lots in downtown Eugene do accept cash, and the stickers on the meters include a phone number to call to find the nearest location that will take cash.
Some meters that were removed from Pearl and Oak Street during repaving have yet to be replaced. Those, and some meters that had been completely cut off, will take another few weeks to convert as the city waits for inventory. He said none of the credit card-only meters have been damaged.
He said in the long term, the city will likely move to a kiosk-based system that will allow cash payments, such as those in Salem and Portland. However, he said, that will take some time and resources, and the city will need a few months to assess the options.
Petry said there has been some video evidence of criminals in the act of vandalism and theft at parking meters. He said Eugene Police are looking into those cases.
