Mayor Daley demanded today that Chicago’s embattled parking meter operator synchronize the time on its pay-and-display boxes and void parking tickets tied to time discrepancies.

“That’s unacceptable. They have to void those tickets,” he said.

Daley said the latest in a string of operational problems that have marred the transition to private control has prompted him to lose confidence in Chicago Parking Meters LLC.

“Slowly but sure, yes,” he said.

But, the mayor said he is not about to cancel the 75-year, $1.15 billion lease tied to a steep schedule of rate hikes that helped plug a gaping hole in the city’s 2009 budget.

“See that home over there? Go over there and ask them if they want their real estate taxes increased,” the mayor said after a ribbon-cutting at the new Jorge Prieto Math & Science Academy, 2231 N. Central.

“We have a rainy day fund. If it wasn’t for that, our financial crisis would be worse. … That was sold at the highest time. You can’t even sell a public asset today. You can’t sell anything today.”

Pressed on what he could do short of voiding the lease to force the company to shape up, Daley said, “Beating ‘em up every day. Bringing them in and talk to them and say, ‘You have to straighten this out.’”

Avis LaVelle, a spokeswoman for Chicago Parking Meters LLC, said time discrepancies are unavoidable, even though pay-and-display boxes are “synched up every night at midnight with the atomic clock.”

“Synchronization is not absolute, no matter what technology you’re using. I just came from a meeting with six people who have cell phones set by satellite. There were five different times among six people,” she said.

As for Daley’s demand that tickets tied to time discrepancies be voided, LaVelle said, “We’re not the enforcement arm for this. The Department of Revenue is doing enforcement. But, if you get to a car one minute after the meter expired, they are being urged to use discretion.”

The Chicago Sun-Times and NBC5 reported this week that pay-and-display boxes touted as the high-tech solution to over-stuffed and improperly calibrated parking meters have a problem of their own: they’re out of synch.

A spot check of about 50 newly-installed boxes found the time they show varies from machine-to-machine — leaving motorists confused about when to return to their vehicles to avoid getting a ticket.

Times displayed by boxes along Lincoln, Fullerton and Armitage didn’t match, even though they’re on the same computer server.

Political fall-out from the parking meter fiasco is at least partly to blame for a precipitous drop in Daley’s approval rating — to 35 percent, the lowest of his 20-year reign, according to a Chicago Tribune poll.

“I take responsibility. I do wear the shirt and I will wear it. I have no problems with that,” the mayor said.

BY CAROL MARIN AND DON MOSELEY Staff Reporters
from Chicago Sun Times

Chicago’s new pay-and-display parking meters have a problem.

They’re not all in synch, according to a spot check of about 50 of the new parking pay kiosks that found the time they show varies from machine to machine.
» Click to enlarge image
Doug Boadway on Monday checks the receipt he got from the parking meter stand to the time printed on the ticket and the exact, actual time. He found there was a difference in real time as to the time on the ticket.
(NBC Chicago)

They should all show the same time. They didn’t. And that could cost you.

City officials and a spokeswoman for Chicago Parking Meters LLC, which the city hired to take over the meters in a megadeal in February, say no one’s being shorted on parking time.

It would be “unfair to suggest . . . consumers are being given anything less than the time . . . they are entitled,” said company spokeswoman Avis LaVelle.

She said the pay boxes are synchronized to “assure timekeeping accuracy.”

But the Chicago Sun-Times / NBC5 survey found the time they showed was inaccurate by amounts varying from just a few seconds to about a minute.

That might not seem like much — unless you’re counting on your meter lasting till a certain time, only to get back by then and find it’s run out and you have a parking ticket.

Parking recently in the 2500 block of North Lincoln, Barry Shuman said he glanced at his cell phone to note the time — 11:45 a.m. Then, he looked at his parking receipt.

“Ticket comes out: The ticket says 11:43,” said Shuman.

If he hadn’t noticed, he said he might have come back when he thought his time would be up according to his cell phone and gotten a ticket.

Shuman’s view? “You are getting short two [minutes].”

“You got to know that people are getting tickets because of that one- to two-minute gap,” said “Mike, The Parking Ticket Geek,” a Chicago man who runs a Web site devoted to parking and ticket issues.

Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) shares that view — after getting a ticket himself recently.

“I thought I had extra time, and I was off by a couple of minutes,” said Waguespack, who was one of just five aldermen who voted against Mayor Daley’s controversial parking-meter privatization plan.

When he got back to his car, the time had expired — and he had a ticket.

LaVelle said the chances of meters being out of synch with the city’s central computer servers are minimal.

“Though the likelihood that a pay box might notably become ‘out of synch’ with the server is low, the clocks are synchronized nightly in an effort to mitigate this risk,” LaVelle said.

To minimize any problem, the parking system relies on an atomic clock, an extremely accurate timekeeper, said Ed Walsh, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Revenue.

“The server clock is an atomic clock, and the pay-and-displays synchronize with the server to verify the time,” Walsh said.

But he acknowledged: “Minor time fluctuations are to be expected.”

In fact, the Sun-Times/ NBC5 survey found that times didn’t match at pay-and-display parking boxes along Lincoln, Fullerton and Armitage avenues even though they’re on the same server.

The company that made the pay-and-display machines — Cale Parking Systems U.S.A. — didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.

By November, about 3,000 pay-and-display parking kiosks — at which drivers pay and get a receipt to show when their time runs out — are expected to be in place across the city, to replace 36,000 old-style parking meters.

The new parking system has drawn plenty of complaints — mostly about higher parking fees and malfunctions.

And now this.

“Wow,” real estate agent Doug Boadway said after putting in his quarters at a new meter in the 2600 block of North Lincoln and finding a two-minute difference in the time on his satellite-linked cell phone and the clock on the kiosk.

“That’s not fair,” Boadway said.

Don Moseley is an NBC5 producer.

They want to bring the Olympics here in 2016. What good would that do for the city? The cost will be payed for by the people of Chicago. Do you remember how bad the street department was last winter with cleaning the streets in what was one of the hardest winters in 10 years? They did not want to pay for OT so they could save money for the Olympics. The City is 1/2 a billion short. What happened to the 1.5 billion they got for the parking meters?