Two Pittsburgh startups are teaming up to make sure robotaxis pay their fair share to park.
“We are ensuring municipalities don’t lose millions in revenue just because driverless vehicles can’t feed meters.”
Jim Gibbs, Meter Feeder
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) still require a human to feed a meter or pay through an app — which defeats the purpose of going fully self-driving. But last week, Meter Feeder, a parking payment platform, and Mapless AI, an AV software company, successfully completed what they say is the first machine-to-machine parking transaction in the US, just in time for Waymo’s Pittsburgh deployment.
“Cities have spent decades building analog parking infrastructure for humans,” Jim Gibbs, CEO of Meter Feeder, told Technical.ly. “We are ensuring municipalities don’t lose millions in revenue just because driverless vehicles can’t feed meters.”
The infrastructure works behind the scenes in a fairly simple way. An AV pulls up to the curb, shifts into park and alerts Meter Feeder. The platform then authenticates the vehicle, calculates the rate and settles the payment with the city, according to Gibbs.
Pittsburgh has long served as a hub for AVs, making it a natural testing ground for the new technology. For Mapless AI, the pilot was especially relevant because parking has been a persistent pain point for the startup, CTO Jeffrey Kane Johnson said.
Mapless delivers driverless vehicles to customers for one-way trips, leaving the company to solve the hard problem of where to legally park those vehicles between rides.
“There was really nothing to it,” Johnson told Technical.ly about using the tool. “From our standpoint, it’s really nice because parking is an issue for a lot of the operations we do.”
Meter Feeder originally built the tool back in 2016, Gibbs said, but the new push to get it into the hands of AV companies happened after he had a conversation with an official from Pittsburgh’s Parking Authority about Waymo’s expansion into Pittsburgh.
The hidden cost of AVs
Waymo, which launched in Pittsburgh late last year, racked up nearly 600 parking tickets in San Francisco in 2024, totaling more than $65,000 in fines.
Now the robotaxi company says it completes 500,000 autonomous trips per week across 10 US cities, adding up to plenty of moments when its vehicles could need a parking spot.
While Waymo’s robotaxi trips haven’t started in Pittsburgh yet, parking fees could make a big difference in the city. Pittsburgh has historically relied on parking revenue to balance its budget and is currently facing a budget shortfall of up to $40 million.
Waymo did not immediately respond to Technical.ly’s request to comment on how it plans to pay parking fees in Pittsburgh as it continues to scale.
Machine-to-machine parking transactions also serve a safety function, Gibbs said.
When AVs circle the block instead of stopping, there’s a greater chance of accidents. Plus, no one wants to jump in or out of a moving vehicle, he added.
“Our fleets need to safely stage between rides without circling the block and adding to urban congestion,” Johnson from Mapless AI said. “Meter Feeder gave our vehicles the digital ability to be good civic citizens.”
