New Parking Meters Are Getting Time Wrong, Costing Drivers

Parking Ticket Geek:

When it comes to a parking in a metered space, the difference of a minute could mean getting a $50 ticket for an expired meter if you are just one minute or even one second late returning to your vehicle.

Read the whole story: Parking Ticket Geek

Comments

[mergina]

At what point will it just be cheaper to take the ticket?

[RuffNReddy]

And you think this is a mistake? Pffft!

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

This problem is not unique to Chicago.

I am royally peeved here in NYC.

The article makes it sound more complicated than necessary.

Simply put:
You pay for 15 minutes. You get 15 minutes.
BUT... it the meter's clock is set BEHIND "real" time.... you end up with only 14 or 13 "real" minutes.
That last one or two is a killer.

Is it too much to ask that the meters be locked into "real" time?

[murphy80]

Daley got taken and sold out cheap, as usual.

[Telemachus]

Well, the Diebold Co. needed something to do between elections.

[ejhickey]

Old Chinese saying "When installing new meter system, best not to go off half clocked"

[mjb5406]

Just goes to show you how "up to speed" the city people are... saying the servers that the parking kiosks sync to have an atomic clock... wow! I thought only the US government and certain research facilities had atomic clocks. Now we learn that Richie Daley has invested in one, too! Wonder if he bought it from The Sharper Image before they closed all their stores.

These tech midgets should know that servers (and even home PCs) sync to a time server (like time-a.nist.gov) and, no matter how reliable they (the servers and PCs) are, are subject to time drift, so they need to sync at least once a day; it sounds like their servers are having more of an issue. But they probably use people from Streets and Sanitation to monitor them, so what do you expect?