Parking meter frustration

When something earns the city a bit of revenue, then no matter the inconvenience to New Yorkers, trust city authorities to keep making matters worse. 

Take the parking meters on city streets. A few years back, the city replaced the old ones that ran on quarters with newer machines that accept credit cards and issue receipts to be placed on a car’s dashboard. 

The change was not entirely devoid of improvements: It saved drivers the trouble of having to stock up on quarters. The downside was that when a car pulled out before its meter expired, another driver could no longer use the time left over. Instead, the next driver had to pay all over again for the same spot and for the same time. 

That meant a little extra cash for the city, and a little extra expense and trouble for the drivers. Now, a couple of quarters or a couple of dollars in hardly a lot of money. But finding a parking meter that somebody else had already paid for was one of the minor joys of the day for many drivers, according to many accounts, and one that brought smiles to people’s faces. 

As for the departing drivers who had paid for some extra parking time they were not going to use, the thought that another person would enjoy an already paid-for meter served as consolation. It meant that the money fed to the meter was not going to be wasted and given for nothing to the city’s coffers, but would bring some joy to a fellow driver and fellow human being.

The city could not abide that. And so, the credit-card-charging, parking-receipt-issuing meters arrived. And while city authorities were at it, they installed a few more parking meters for good measure on the streets where there had been none in the past. Those include a number of blocks in Riverdale and Kingsbridge. 

The city, of course, praised its newfangled parking meters. Trust the city to praise whatever new policy it implements.

“New York City uses some of the most sophisticated parking equipment available today,” the city’s Department of Transportation says on its website, in a section describing the new parking meters. 

But installing the “sophisticated equipment” was only half the matter. Maintaining the equipment to ensure it remains operational was a wholly different issue, and one with which the city struggled. The new “sophisticated” meters — which were meant to save New Yorkers the trouble of hoarding quarters, remember? — occasionally break down and refuse to take credit cards, accepting only quarters. 

A slight convenience offered by the credit card-taking meters has disappeared, while their inconveniences have mounted. 

This is what seems to have been happening in sections of Riverdale lately. Some of the parking meters have been refusing credit cards, according to a local resident’s account, and drivers who left their cars to go to a bank and get quarters sometimes got parking tickets in the meantime. 

A reader told The Press last week he got a $35 ticket for exactly that a few weeks ago. The meter, according to the reader’s account, still was not fixed weeks later. The Press could not independently verify the account. A dozen meters inspected by a Press journalist on Nov. 7 did not produce any error messages when a credit card was inserted, and a couple of parking meters, chosen at random by the journalist, processed credit card payments successfully and issued receipts. 

A ticket issued over a malfunctioning parking meter can be disputed in court. But many people, including the reader who called The Press, prefer to simply pay the ticket, rather than waste a day fighting it. And given the circumstances, going to court over a parking ticket also comes with the risk of incurring another ticket in the meantime, should a parking meter near the courthouse happen to malfunction. 

Riverdalians pay substantial amounts to the city in taxes each year. People who park at the meters often do so in order to visit local stores, cafes and restaurants – which also pay taxes to the city. Free on-street parking in the area comes at a premium, and removing parking meters from Riverdale’s streets would be a project that could in fact be convenient for local residents, and a break from policies that bring inconvenience under the guise of improvements. 

But given the city’s reluctance to abandon its money-making enterprises, such as parking meters, at the very least the city should ensure the meters accept the forms of payment they were intended to accept.