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Los Angeles City Council keeps policy to ticket cars at broken meters
A modern parking meter that accepts credit cards.
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Corey Moore/KPCC
)
The LA City Council voted Wednesday night to uphold its policy to ticket drivers who park at broken parking meters.
The council first adopted the “pay to park” policy two years ago to deter vandalism. It applies to new meters that accept credit cards and coins.
Before that, as many as 10 percent of the city’s meters were broken at any time – a potential loss of $5 million a year in revenue.
Dan Mitchell, of the City of LA's Transportation Department said he sees an average of just five broken meters a month.
“Vandalism has become extremely rare on the new meters. The department has been able to maintain those meters at essentially a hundred percent uptime," Mitchell said. "Whenever we have a problem, the new smart meters send a text message to our technicians and they’re able to respond in a few hours.”
The city has had maintenance problems with old meters that only accept coins, but those will be gone by the end of December, Mitchell said.
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