These are the meters and pay stations that are now in Brentwood Village.
And watch the signs on San Vicente – – plans are to extend the meter hours from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
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• Video: Parking Meter Tickets Get Harder to Beat
LOS ANGELES – They may be the nicest people in the world…but when a ‘parking enforcement officer’ leaves this on your car, he or she probably won’t get any kind words from you.
Los Angeles and other cities have expanded the hours you have to pay for parking, and that means more tickets over those extra hours. For example, in downtown LA, if you park at a meter, you’ll pay for parking from 8 am to 8 pm, where the parking meter used to go ‘off’ at 6pm.
You’re also less likely now to park at a broken meter that just couldn’t take your money.
Dan Mitchell, a senior transportation engineer with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, says new meters are much more reliable than the old ones.
“With the excellent staff that we have we’re able to maintain these at greater than 99 percent operability,” he says.
Out of 40-thousand metered spaces in the city of Los Angeles alone, about 32-hundred are meters like this one. No longer one meter per car, or coins only. These sleek, high-tech meters, called “Park N Pay”, let you pay by coin, credit cards, even your cell phone! They also break down less often than the older meters.
“When there’s a problem,” says Mitchell, “the pay station sends a message right to our parking meter person. They can tell what’s wrong, when it went wrong, and come out and fix it right away.”
If somehow one of these machines does break down, lucky you, you can always pay at a different one. Just type in your parking space number.
All over LA, including Glendale, Pasadena, and near the beach in Venice, not everyone likes them, including this woman who got a ticket for five minutes of shopping.
“I just had to exchange something at Banana Republic and I fully intended to pay,” said Meg Henderson of La Canada. “But then I got on the cell phone. I don’t care for these meters because it’s too easy to forget. It’s not right by your car.”
These meters can be confusing if you haven’t used them before.
But whether it’s an old meter or a new one, the thing most people complain about is the price.
Drivers will notice a big increase in the parking rates, up to 4 dollars in some places. The city says it hadn’t raised prices in nearly twenty years, and hopes higher prices will encourage higher turnover of spaces to help drivers and businesses.
“Rather than have underpriced parking and have people circling around for ten to fifteen minutes looking for those cheap parking spaces,” says Dan Mitchell, “we’re trying to manage the demand by setting the proper pricing to encourage them to turn over those parking spaces. It saves congestion, saves pollution, saves the environment.”
Don’t think you can get away without paying, because these new meters are in high-tech communication with the humans who hand out the tickets.
“The Park N Pay stations operate on a wireless network,” says Mitchell, “and they deliver the payment directly to the enforcement personnel through their handheld computer. They’re able to look at their handheld and look at the street and tell exactly which cars have paid and which haven’t paid.
So you can’t claim the meter ‘just ran out’.
The City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation is looking for public comment on its new meters, as the new meters are part of a pilot program. Please see the Department of Transportation website at: www.ladot.lacity.org and click on the “Contact Us” link.
Copyright © 2009, KTLA-TV, Los Angeles
