In most urban centers today, on-street metered parking systems allocat
e scarce short-term parking space in an unreliable and inequitable way
. These systems are unreliable in the sense that a driver has a limite
d chance of finding a short-term parking space reasonably close to his
or her destination. They am inequitable in that they fail to accurate
ly serve equally well all segments of the parking public and the busin
esses these segments patronize. This paper describes three low-cost pr
oposals designed to improve the availability of short-term on-street p
arking and tests them on a small scale with a simulation model.