Many ‘broken’ parking meters fixing themselves
By: Michael Neibauer
February 22, 2009
Two-thirds of all District parking meters reported broken turn out to be operational when a repair crew arrives on-site, a staggering statistic partly explained by the number of oft-failing meters that self-correct.
Grievance calls about the D.C.’s aging meter stock hit a record 116,354 in 2008, but that figure bears little relationship to the number of actual broken meters, D.C. Department of Transportation officials recently told a D.C. Council committee. Crews dispatched to repair a broken meter, the agency says, found the device operating as intended 67 percent of the time.
How is this possible? One explanation, according to DDOT, is that 74 percent of D.C.’s 15,453 meters are designed to self-correct, but are also “at the end of their useful life.” So a person who parks at a meter displaying a “fail” message may return an hour later to find a working meter flashing zero time and a ticket on the windshield — a process that may repeat several times a day.
DDOT has no way of checking whether a meter had failed at a given time, said John Lisle, agency spokesman, though the department does look at a meter’s breakdown and repair history when a person challenges a parking ticket.
“It was a news flash to me that we had this huge number of meters that are self-repairing,” Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham, chairman of the public works committee, said Thursday. “These are like Lazarus meters. It could account for a lot of anger we have in this city.”
DDOT is moving to replace its self-correcting meters with newer technology, including pay-by-cell phone devices, but the project has been slowed by budget cuts. By June, the agency said, 17 percent of the old meters will have been removed, but they will still account for 57 percent of the meter inventory.
Aging equipment does not alone explain the huge disparity between complaint calls and genuinely broken meters. Other reasons, according to DDOT: multiple calls about the same meter, and customers falsely reporting a broken meter to get out of a ticket.
Acting DDOT Director Gabe Klein also promised a closer examination of the work performed by Texas-based ACS State and Local Solutions, which is paid $4 million a year to keep D.C.’s 17,157 metered spaces running smoothly.
For failing to meet certain performance measures, ACS paid DDOT $278,380 in damages in 2007, but only $43,070 in 2008. The steep decline may be the result of more rigorous contract oversight and field reviews, Klein said, but it also raises questions about the work ACS is doing.
“If they’re resolving [meter complaints] for some reason before they’re going out to fix them, then that’s a problem and it could be why we’re collecting less damages,” Klein said.
mneibauer@dcexaminer.com
