Parking fees tend to be a fact of life in bustling cities. But sometimes, a parking meter will take a customer’s payment without displaying the time purchased. If that happens and the customer is unaware of the malfunction, it can result in an unjust ticket being issued.
The city can be a mean place.
Durango Parking Operations Manager Wade Moore said malfunctions, or at least what appear to be malfunctions, are reported to the city’s parking division on average about five times a day.
More precise figures were not available, he said, because parking meters have their interaction logs wiped when their operating system is reset – otherwise the amount of data would become “unwieldy.”
During the week of May 20, the city processed 20,521 parking meter transactions. At about five calls per weekday, 99.8% of meters operated without issue, he said.
But that is based only on the number of calls received by the parking division. It is possible some people don’t realize a parking meter has malfunctioned or don’t bother to report it.
The city charges $25 for expired meters, making it a costly occurrence for the victims of malfunctioning meters.
In most cases, “malfunctioning” meters are just acting slowly, Moore said. When residents call the phone number displayed on parking meters to report a failed transaction, the city will dispatch a parking officer or a parking enforcement technician to examine the meter.
By the time an officer arrives, the meter is usually displaying the transaction properly, he said. If the meter isn’t displaying the amount of time properly, the officer will add it manually. But sometimes, the customer has already walked away, Moore acknowledged.
“It (malfunctioning meters) tends to happen when the meter is ‘thinking,’ could be resetting internally, or communicating with the home server,” Moore said in an email to The Durango Herald. “We can’t really track them objectively as it isn’t something that reports in for tracking.”
If a customer reports the issue, they won’t be ticketed for missing time on the meter, he said. If a ticket was already issued by another parking officer, the officer responding to the report will void the ticket, he added.
“The key to proving it (a complaint) isn’t a prank is to call whenever it isn’t acting right and before they walk away,” he said. “Don’t wait for a ticket, because if we check the meter and it works fine, that will be noted on the citation database, so the judge can see that if they protest the citation.”
Regardless of how a customer pays, with coins, a credit card or a GEM smart card, Moore said the customer should stay at the meter until their purchase is processed. He has seen cases in which someone paid with a credit card and went on their way before realizing their card was declined.
“Our philosophy is that if a citizen calls in and has an issue of any kind – credit card, coin, blank screen, whatever it is – we try to get somebody there within 15 or 20 minutes, and usually that involves us putting time on the meter for them,” he said.
The city parking division has two to five officers working the streets at any given time during working hours downtown. The officers carry radios to communicate with customer service representatives who will reach them to report calls about malfunctioning meters.
Each meter has a sticker with a nine-digit number that allows parking officers to locate the meters.
When inspecting a meter, a parking enforcement technician will test payment methods and functionality. If the issue can’t be identified or rectified, a small “out of service” note is placed onto the display case and the parking space becomes free to use without charge until repairs are completed, Moore said.
Repairs, when necessary, involve cleaning the SIM cards used to communicate with the city’s servers. The technology acts just like cellphones using SIM cards to connect to mobile networks. The battery is swapped out as well.
Moore compared the process to resetting one’s phone.
If that doesn’t work, the meter will be replaced. Sometimes, coin slots don’t read coins correctly or at all, which could be an indication the slot itself needs replaced, he said. It could also be an indication coins were simply placed into the slot too quickly for a proper reading.
Batteries within the meters can last about six months on a charge. Moore said he interacts with all 970 parking meters about twice a year to replace batteries, which are rechargeable. He replaces anywhere from three to 10 batteries a day.
Credit or debit card transactions are the most common transactions, accounting for roughly 57% of payments at meters, and they’re the most frequent payment method to produce an error, he said. Credit cards must make “phone calls” to a central clearinghouse to have the payment approved, which sometimes can take several minutes.
If residents prefer using a card to pay instead of coins, Moore recommended they purchase a GEM card at the Durango Transit Center. The cards are “super fast at the meter” because they don’t have to issue a call to approve transactions. They are preloaded with whatever amount a customer wants when purchased.
At any time, the parking division has between 30 and 40 parking meters awaiting testing before they are installed on the streets, Moore said. Payment processing and basic functions of the meter, including buttons used to adjust length of parking time and to confirm purchases, are tested.
“We have a really vigorous maintenance program, and we want people to let us know if they're having a problem because we want them to have a good experience,” he said.
cburney@durangoherald.com
