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Charleston officialspress Flowbird for fixes after battery and delivery problems; vendor targets March 1 rollout
Summary
Flowbird, the city's parking meter vendor, told the City of Charleston committee it has installed 700 new meters and is shipping replacement batteries and additional heads, aiming to have hardware and batteries fully deployed by March 1, 2025; council members said service disruptions have caused lost revenue and urged faster remediation.
Flowbird representatives told the City of Charleston Traffic and Transportation Committee on Jan. 28 that 700 new parking meters and pay stations have been delivered and installed, and that supply-chain and battery problems have delayed completion of the roll‑out.
Natalie Snow and Jeff Nethery of Flowbird said the company has experienced vendor and weather-related supply problems and that incorrect or end-of-life batteries were shipped to the city. Flowbird said a corrected battery shipment is arriving in stages (100 batteries arriving immediately and weekly shipments of 125–150 thereafter) and that local field technicians are prepared to install replacements; Flowbird said the remaining meter heads are shipping weekly and that the company expects the hardware and battery replacements to be installed and fully operational by March 1, 2025.
Council members said the uneven rollout has left many meters beeping, offline, or unable to accept payments, producing customer complaints and likely revenue loss. “700 meters in 2 years is not acceptable,” one council member said. Flowbird acknowledged the rollout had not been ideal but noted the city’s new app and text-to-park options are available and that roughly 200,000 digital transactions have occurred since the app launch in February 2024.
City staff and council members pressed Flowbird on contract status and payment. Flowbird said the contract is three years long and that the city is not billed for equipment not delivered. Flowbird also said the new meters are solar-assisted and that properly functioning batteries should last three to five years.
Council members raised operational concerns: the city's smart-card refund function is not supported by the new meters, the system default minimum payment was configured as one hour (a change from former coin-based increments) and can be modified but may be constrained by credit-card processing costs, and roughly 300 of the deployed meters were showing low-battery, dead-battery or communications failures during a recent operations review. The committee requested a written remediation schedule and a progress update in April.
