Thursday, July 28, 2011

Pay-by-Phone implemented city wide; are people still getting tickets?

Well Pay-by-Phone (see our previous post here) has been implemented city-wide now, and it seems to be very popular.

“As we’ve started rolling out this service, the adoption rate has been very high.  More than 30,000 people have already signed up and are using their phones to pay for parking,” said DDOT Deputy Director Gloria Jeff.  “They like the convenience.  For others who prefer to pay the old-fashioned way, they can still do that at a meter.”
But, have meter maids caught on?  We have our suspicions that when you pay by phone, meter maids are still handing out tickets for those without parking stubs on their dash.  DDOT says that the phone transactions are appearing in real time on the handheld devices used by parking enforcement.  Are they checking them?  Are drivers putting in the right zones when they pay by phone?  Or are they left thinking it worked when it didn't?

The fact that people are still getting tickets is unfounded, but we were surprised to get a card on our windshield while parked in Penn Quarter that said to place that card on our dash if we paid by phone.  That led us to believe that people were getting tickets when the meter maid noticed there was nothing on the dash.



DDOT does seem to be doing a good job of educating the public about the new program.  We also got this flyer on our windshield:

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