COEUR d’ALENE — The chalk stick is going the way of the steamers in Coeur d’Alene.

The Coeur d’Alene City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a plan by the city to adopt a $50,000 state-of-the-art license plate recognition (LPR) system.

The system electronically monitors any cars that pass it as they

trundle to parking spots in the city’s garages or park along downtown streets.

“The system uses cameras and hardware that can track a car going 220 mph, 115 feet away,” Sam Taylor, Coeur d’Alene’s deputy city administrator, said.

The LPR system is used by law enforcement and municipalities across the country and Canada, Taylor said, where it employs global positioning systems to track vehicles. It makes sure that once a motorist exceeds, for example, a free, two-hour streetside parking limit, the motorist moves the car more than 300 feet before parking for free once more.

“That’s the city code,” Taylor said.

Once the system is in place, parking attendants will no longer be required to manually recognize or mark the tires of cars parking on their beats. Attendants in mobile carts can just pass parked cars and allow the LPR to make note of their parking spots and the times.

The next time an attendant passes, the system will alert if the car has overstayed its welcome.

So long, chalk stick.

The system, which won’t be in place for a couple of months, will be used in parking garages, and on the city-owned parking attendant carts that tool around downtown.

The adoption of the electronic system was recommended in last year’s parking study update, Taylor said.

“The city has sought to substantially increase efficiency and the ease of use of its parking infrastructure for the community and to better manage overall enforcement of the downtown parking system,” Taylor said.

Once implemented, the LPR system will do just that, better than chalk, he said.

Diamond Parking, the city’s parking vendor, uses an LPR system — which is made by Genetec, Inc. — in other places including Vancouver, British Columbia.

“It integrates into the existing infrastructure and software systems used by Diamond Parking,” Taylor said.

Because the company and the makers of the system already work closely together, it made sense to purchase the system as a sole source expenditure — which doesn’t go through the normal bidding process, Taylor said.

The system will benefit visitors at the McEuen Park lot who stay for less than two hours because they won’t need to visit the ticket kiosk, Taylor said.

“That will reduce lines at the stations,” he said.

And it integrates with the city’s call-to-park system, so motorists can call in to pay for parking.

“It will provide a better visitor experience overall,” he said.