Last Updated on December 31, 2017 by Lawrence Berezin

Are you making meter mistakes and getting parking tickets?

I’ve been receiving a veritable cavalcade of calls from our driving community about meter mistakes that warriors and cops are issuing tickets at a record pace. Please don’t make the following meter mistakes.

Are you making these parking meter mistakes?

• Feeding the meter-You are permitted to park in a metered space for the maximum time on the parking sign/or meter regulating your space. In other words, you cannot re-activate a meter or purchase more time on a muni-meter once the maximum allotted time has expired
  • Caveat-If the time period in a parking meter zone is for two hours, and you activated your meter for one hour, you may re-activate the meter for remaining one hour
  • Caveat-if there is time remaining on a meter, you may park your car for the remaining time, and then re-activate the meter for the maximum time on the parking sign regulating the space
• Parking at a broken single space meter-If a single space parking meter is broken (call 311 and report it), you may park for the maximum time displayed on the parking sign and/or meter regulating the space.
  • Caveat-The “old” rule permitting parking at a broken meter for one hour only is no longer the rule. Fugetaboutit!
• Parking at a broken muni-meter-The broken meter parking rule is different for muni-meters. “If a muni-meter is broken or missing, you are required to purchase time from a functional muni-meter in the same parking field or on the same block, and display the receipt on the dashboard of your car…”
  • Caveat-“parking field” is not defined by the rules. But, you are required to check across the street in your quest to find a functional muni-meter [via Gridlock Sam Schwartz, “Traffic Conundrums,” page 17, Gridlock Sam Productions (2006)]
• Parking an oversized vehicle in a metered space-When a vehicle is too large to be parked within a single parking meter space, it shall be parked with the front section of the vehicle alongside the forward meter (activate the forward parking meter)
• Sitting in your car before activating the parking meter-A very nice lady called me incensed about receiving a parking ticket for an expired meter while she was seated in her car finishing her book before activating the parking meter. I am sorry to report, your first activity when you stop your car in a parking space is to activate the mechanical meter or purchase time on the muni-meter.
• Not checking for missing required elements-In addition to the usual gaggle of required elements, a parking ticket warrior must enter the meter number, time limitation on the parking sign/or meter regulating your space, and attest the meter was operational. If not, you win upon application for dismissal. Yea!
• Not checking the place of occurrence for accuracy- I fought a parking ticket for a wonderful customer yesterday where the parking ticket warrior misdescribed the place of occurrence for a mechanical meter. How did I figure that one out? I matched the days/hours entered on the parking ticket against the days/hours displayed on the DOT parking sign locater. The warrior entered the days that corresponded with the days displayed on parking signs on the East side of the street with the hours displayed on the parking signs on the West side of the street. (Victory, victory, that’s our cry…V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!)

Bonus tip: You can beat a parking ticket issued while you are walking to and fro a muni-meter as long as the start time on your muni-meter receipt is within 5-minutes of the time the parking ticket was issued [See 4-08 (h)(1)].

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