Imagine walking out to your car and a big yellow slab is suctioned-cupped to your windshield, completely obscuring the view and making it impossible to drive.
You’ve been “Barnacled.”
The Barnacle is a high-tech, smart device that attaches to windshields with suction cups that have 750 pounds of force. It’s billed as an evolution of the traditional boot parking enforcement officers put on cars of chronic traffic violators who don’t pay their tickets.
The 20-pound unit includes tamper-resistant software that will alert police if anyone tries to remove the device without first settling their tickets. There’s a QR code on the device itself, where a transgressor can pay tickets on the spot.
That will generate a digital code to release the Barnacle, which the motorist can then place in a designated drop box.
The high-tech devices were a reality in Cheyenne, which began using them in 2022 to force those with tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid parking tickets to pony up.
But after less than three years, their use has been discontinued. Not due to the ire of residents — who felt the expensive tactic was a little over the top for just parking tickets — but by the very nature of Wyoming itself.
“One of the things we learned with the Barnacle is, if you have a crack or a chip in your windshield, we can’t use it because it uses suction on the windshield,” Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins said. “And so, if you have any damage to your windshield it just doesn’t work.”
Anyone who’s spent any meaningful time in Wyoming can attest that it can be difficult to find a windshield without a chip or crash.
After considering the overall cost of the Barnacle, which required a monthly fee from the city, and the fact the devices weren’t as useful as often as expected, the city decided to discontinue them.
“We just bought more of the old-fashioned, I call them bladder boots, which just immobilizes the wheel,” Collins said. “So, we still do immobilization of vehicles. We just do it in a different way.”
The boots are also reusable, Collins added, which makes them a lot more cost-effective.
That Good Old Wyoming Wind
No one knows for certain just how many windshields crack in Wyoming compared to other states, but Tim Cortez, owner of Decker Glass in Casper, thinks Wyoming could give any state a run for its money when it comes to broken windshields.
“We supply windshields all over the region,” Cortez said. “We have a huge warehouse here in town, and a bunch of vans, and every morning the van drivers grab windshields, amongst other things we sell, and then they go out to different mom-and-pop shops all over the region.”
Cortez said his wholesale division supplied more than 33,000 windshields throughout his region in the last 12 months, while also doing at least 2,600 chip repairs in his own shop. That’s just a slice of the overall windshield market in the state, but it’s a big one.
“We’re the biggest supplier of windshields in Wyoming,” Cortez said. “And broken, cracked or chipped windshields are a big part of our business as well.”
One reason Cortez believes chipped and cracked windshields are so prevalent in Wyoming is the combination of substances that get put on the roads in winter and the Cowboy State’s famous wind.
“There’s high speeds and just debris on the road,” he said. “And people kick that stuff up in summertime, when they’re putting a lot of miles on their vehicles.”
Another factor Cortez mentioned is the oil and gas industry, which is also prevalent in many Wyoming communities and is still the state’s No. 1 industry.
“We’re seeing a lot more welding trucks running around and things like that,” he said. “Which tells us that, ‘Hey, energy is picking up, oil fields are picking up.’
“And as people travel on those dirt roads to those oil rigs, they track all the dirt, mud, rocks, and debris back onto the main roads and highways and interstates. So that contributes to the problem overall.”
Parking Still A Huge Problem For Cheyenne
Parking has had a long history of trouble in Cheyenne, Collins told Cowboy State Daily.
He recalled that former Councilman Richard Johnson “found an article from over 100 years ago where people were complaining that there was no place to park in downtown Cheyenne. It’s an ongoing problem.”
But when Collins became mayor, it was especially bad, he added. Cheyenne had huge numbers of unpaid parking violations.
“We had some folks who had, like, $5,000 for tickets and things,” he said. “And that’s why we brought the Barnacles and why we have the boots; to find those people and immobilize their vehicles until they paid those very large tickets.”
Collins credited the Barnacles with helping people realize the city is serious about its parking ordinances, and parking tickets shouldn’t just be ignored.
“The Barnacle was a good poster child for our efforts,” Collins said.
But in the long run, the point of parking enforcement is not about the tickets themselves, he added. It’s helping ensure people can find an open space when they need to do business downtown.
Collins believes the issue is more of a walking problem than parking issue, pointing out the city has parking garages — which cost less than a $1.50 a day for long-term passes — making them an affordable option for those who work downtown and need to park longer than two hours.
“We’ve had too many employees parking on the streets, making it a challenge for our businesses to be as robust as they could be, because then parking isn’t available close to their business,” Collins said. “And sometimes people choose not to come shop downtown, so I think we still need to work hard on trying to overcome that.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
