Reporters in Huntington, West Virginia recently took it upon themselves to conduct an in-depth analysis of parking meter use in their town, and the results were surprisingly informative and impartial. Both disgruntled residents and hardworking city officials were represented, and the facts were laid out clearly. According to the crew at wowktv.com crew, people around town don’t like the old-fashioned meters that are always falling apart – victims of the weather and frequent vandalism.
Huntington Parking Board Director Mike Wilson says about half of the city’s 1350 meters are still mechanical rather than digital. Wilson compared the meters to older vending machines. He said that the machines are subject to weather and other conditions that cause them to break. Wilson said he gets up to ten broken meter reports a day.
Huntington parkers prefer the digital meters that work reliably and keep time accurately. The older meters, according to the article, time out within 4o to 15 minutes before they should, resulting in invalid citations.
Wilson says those meters and parking tickets get fixed and dismissed after the customer files a broken meter report.
Wilson added, “We would hope you would call us if you feel you got a citation in error. I have a certified meter technician we can send out.”
It sounds like everybody in town is in agreement that the older meters are an issue, and the city tries its best to accommodate the problem. Besides a whole new installation of sparkling digital meters, that’s the best anybody can expect.
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