The global capital of technology has absolute horrid infrastructure and is not on the forefront of any municipal technologies.

There's a big disconnect from people building new projects and local governance, and it's growing. When tech companies started even providing buses for their employees, because local government is too fractured and incapable of running needed bus routes, and can not coordinate across county and city borders, local activists were extremely upset that tech workers were not driving their personal cars and instead using environments-saving and traffic-reducing transit.

I got billed by plate at gravel parking lots in places in Iceland where there were probably more sheep nearby than human residents. Embarrassing.

Or develop 12 competing apps that each only work in different lots.

A fellow Swede I presume?

It's extra silly cause I once parked in central Oslo and got the ticket mailed to my sthlm address. No fuss, no problem, super easy!

We got a lot to learn from our neighbours....

No not a Swede at all this is funny! That was my experience parking in the Washington, DC area last year.

Super easy unless you have moved recently, then you don't get the bill and end up years later in collections for the original amount plus a million late fees added on.

Nah it arrives electronically to kivra, which is like email except you log in with your social security number and it's only for "official business" like invoices and whatnot.

Unfortunately here in the US we are pathologically incompetent.

One day we will attempt to roll out such a system. We'll pay McKinsey billions to develop and operate it, set no targets, and they will take the money and disappear for 10 years, and then deliver some unusable website developed by one offshore developer.

That sounds great! In the US the phrase you used "mailed to my sthlm address" would never mean anything other than physically sending a paper bill to your house.

Yeah I phrased that wrong. I wanted to emphasize that I don't live in Norway. I found it extra impressive that it worked so seamlessly even with a foreign car. Oh well.

The reasons why the Bay Area is the global capital of technology are absolutely totally unrelated to the quality of infrastructure or the policies of local government there.

It’s mainly due to the state of US technological advancement decades ago when the whole thing got started, the general US-level business-friendly environment, and the presence of an extremely prestigious (especially in science and tech fields) university nearby.

The specific reason is that William Shockley's mother lived in Palo Alto. Stanford gets the credit but in reality it had nothing to do with the decision.

I would bill by ticket machine too if it was my job to collect money on the parking. I’m guessing that the amount of people who never pay is much higher than zero so it really only makes sense when you have such high throughput that the slowdown is detrimental (such as the Bay bridge).