Parking attendants working in the Pugh and Fraser street garages will soon be making way for automated payment machines.

The project will close Fraser Street garage for two weeks starting Nov. 7 to remove the attendant booth and transform single entry and exit lanes into a two exit, one entry lane system. Workers will install three pay stations for the garage -- one next to the elevator adjacent to Fraser Street and two at the elevator in Fraser Street Plaza.

The equipment upgrades will be modeled after three automated machines in the new Beaver Avenue

garage, where drivers take a ticket on their way through the garage. They then slip the ticket into a pay station after returning to the garage, before driving out.

"This is how the industry's been going," State College Borough Public Works Director Mark Whitfield said. "There's no fumbling for cash in line or lost tickets."

Minor construction has been going on for the past two weeks at the Fraser Street garage's entrance to prepare for the changes and will continue until Nov. 7, he said.

Parking Manager Ed Holmes said the borough will not need to close Pugh Street garage for construction because two exit lanes already exist.

Pugh Street garage upgrades include new lighting, and painting and transforming a current storage area into a customer service attendant booth. The garage's attendant booth and outdated pay station beside the elevator at the Pugh Street exit will be replaced with two new machines and another will be added by the elevator by Humes Alley.

Running all three garages on 24-hour automated machines is expected to increase the borough's parking revenue by $100,000 each year, Parking Office Manager Karen Martin said.

"That's pretty significant," Martin said. "Especially when you add the fact that the Beaver [Avenue] garage is a new garage. It's all new money added into the system."

Equipment updates for the three garages, totaling almost $1.4 million through a 2005 bond issue, are expected to prevent drivers from leaving overnight without paying, when no attendant is on duty.

An average of at least 1,500 cars leave Pugh and Fraser street garages each month without having to pay an attendant, Holmes said.

Besides making payment methods more efficient, Holmes said the machines will allow attendants to focus on problems drivers may be experiencing.

Whitfield said at least one attendant will be present in each garage for about 16 hours of the day. When an attendant can't be found, drivers will rely on an audio-video system that will link Fraser and Pugh street garages to a 24-hour attendant service booth in the Beaver Avenue garage.

Council member Craig Humphrey said he supports the upgrades but has mixed feelings. He said he had trouble figuring out Pugh Street garage's pay station when it was installed in 1999.

"I went bananas. I couldn't figure it out," he said, laughing. Humphrey said he became flustered and dropped his ticket without realizing. But a recent trip to the Beaver Avenue garage eased his mind, he said, when he used the machines without a problem.

However, Humphrey said he will miss interacting with a person.

"A parking garage is a pretty cold place," he said. "You're basically in a cement bunker with cars. Having an attendant warms it up a little bit."

The borough also plans to spend $100,000 to place two electric signs downtown for a continual update of the number of spots available in each garage. That project is slated for early 2006. Another $40,000 will be spent in 2006 for a consultant to assess the borough's parking system and put together a consolidated business plan.

"The management of the parking system now is pretty fragmented," Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said. "So many people have their hands in parking that it's a difficult system for us to manage."