New law makes it easier to feed meters

From CBS New York:

A new city law allows drivers to prepay one hour before muni-meters go into effect so that they don’t have to sit in their cars watching the clock tick.

“Let’s say you’re going to a doctor’s appointment or you’re taking your kid to school and the meter starts at 8:30 in the morning and you get there at 8:15, well, up until now, you have to wait until 8:30 to actually get the receipt,” said Councilman David Greenfield, who sponsored the legislation passed in June 2013. “What my law does is it allows you to get the receipt an hour before to prepay that muni-meter.”

The new law also requires parking meters to shut themselves off at the end of their posted hours of service and when they run out of receipt paper.

Parking rules do not apply to enforcement agents

From PIX11:

New York City’s traffic enforcement agents, the ones who give out parking tickets, recently began illegally parking their own private cars on a busy city block. The parking signs on 38th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan make it clear that only commercial parking is allowed. The limit is three hours at a cost of $4 an hour. There are muni-meters up and down the block.

But a couple of weeks ago, trucks making pickups and deliveries on this garment center block, found there were no spaces available. The reason is that agents had begun parking their own private cars on the block, taking up almost all the spaces on both sides of the block. Business owners and truck drivers complained to PIX Investigates.

We learned that the Traffic Enforcement Division had recently opened a new office on 36th Street and 7th Avenue. Apparently many of the agents decided to use W. 38th Street as their own private parking area, despite the fact that they are not commercial vehicles and were not paying for the parking.

Should you have to feed meters in snowstorms?

From the Daily News:

It's an eternal truth in our city, Mayor de Blasio has said — come hell or high water, parking meters will remain in effect.

But City Councilman David Greenfield (D-Brooklyn) wants to change that — proposing legislation that would take the city’s Muni-Meters out of service whenever alternate-side parking is suspended for snow.

Greenfield said his bill would end a longstanding hassle for motorists.

“You’ve got to climb a mountain of snow to get to a Muni-Meter,” he said. “If we get piles that are 3, 4, 5 feet high, you can’t even get to a meter.”

“I’ve gotten tons of complaints about this,” he said.

While alternate-side-parking rules are routinely suspended to clean up after storms, parking meter rules are almost always left in effect — a pronouncement city officials have grown used to repeating over and over at storm briefings.

Officials say they want curbs clear, especially in commercial areas where meters are more often in effect, to help with snow removal. They also say turnover in parking spots is crucial to local businesses.

De Blasio spokeswoman Marti Adams said the administration would review the Greenfield bill. Sanitation Department spokesman Vito Turso said his agency would also take a look, but would most likely “oppose the bill since the department needs access to the curbs in order to effectively clear snow.”

Munimeters are a scam

From the Daily News:

Finding a parking spot in some Queens neighborhoods is a tough enough task. But now drivers say they are battling testy Muni-Meters that cheat them out of precious minutes and reject their coins and credit cards.

“They are not efficient. They rip you off,” said Robert Holden of the Juniper Park Civic Association. “Everyone has a horror story.”

Last year, the city finished replacing old-fashioned parking meters with the new Muni-Meters. But in some Queens neighborhoods, the transition has been anything but smooth.

Holden and the Daily News walked along a stretch of Metropolitan Ave. in Middle Village recently and found more than half of the meters had the wrong time.

“You put your money in but the clock is slow,” said Holden, who discovered the problem during a recent shopping trip. “You don’t get the entire 15 minutes. We’re being cheated.”

One of the meters was a full seven minutes slow, while another was five minutes slow. For someone dropping a quarter in for a 15 minute stay, half the time is gone before they place the receipt onto their dashboard.

A city Transportation Department spokesman said more than 99% of the meters in the city are operational at any given time.

People who encounter broken meters should pay at the closest meter and call 311 to report the problem.

Elected officials and civic leaders around the borough say they have received a barrage of complaints.

Take your paid parking time with you

From the NY Post:

City drivers are about to get a rare parking break.

The City Council is set to fast-track new legislation that would allow drivers to use unexpired muni-meter time at multiple spots citywide without the worry of being ticketed, The Post has learned.

The new bill — which has the key support of both Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) and Mayor Bloomberg — would let drivers purchase time from a muni-meter on a street anywhere in the city, keep the receipt and then continue to use any remaining amount on another street. Still, the transferred parking time must be for spaces with meter rates that are the same as or less than the rates of the location in which the parking time was purchased.

The bill — the subject of a council hearing April 23 — comes in response to a Post report in September that found city agencies had wildly different opinions over whether the practice is legal because the current rules are so vague.

For example, the Department of Transportation claims drivers can already transfer the remaining “time” over to other parking spaces.

But NYPD traffic agents routinely slap summons on drivers who try this tactic — and city Finance Department judges usually side with the agents.