AUTOMATIC FEE DETERMINING SYSTEM FOR PARKING GARAGES

摘要

A parking fee is automatically computed on the basis of elapsed time between the issuing of a ticket to a customer upon entry to the facility and the surrendering of the ticket by the customer upon departure from the facility. The tickets are in the form of reusable plastic cards embossed with permanent encoded information representative of a specified time interval during a given day. The customer is issued, upon entry to the facility, a ticket bearing information corresponding to his time of entry. A ticket dispenser having an indexable magazine with compartments corresponding to different periods of time throughout the day is sequentially indexed by a clock to issue the proper ticket at the proper time. Upon departure, the ticket is surrendered to a card reader which compares the time of surrender with the issue time encoded upon the card and a fee is displayed based on the computed elapsed time. Cash in the amount due when deposited at a pay station adjacent the card reader opens the exit gate. The cards are embossed with bar coded information which is read by scanning the underside of the card with feeler fingers which engage in the depressions of the underside of the code bars to advance switches to positions which decode the encoded information.