By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
Drivers in 2020 have been frustrated to find that parking meters all over NYC have not been accepting credit cards, according to an article by the NY Times. On January 2nd, the NYC DOT took to twitter to acknowledge the problem. “We’ve received reports across the city of parking meters not accepting credit cards. DOT crews are out fixing the issue. In the meantime, meters are still accepting coins & the free #ParkNYC app, available at https://t.co/iCQhX2wHF4, App Store, GooglePlay.”
The temporary problem is attributed to a glitch in the software. Remember the infamous bugs fears in anticipation of Y2K, where people were afraid that computers and software apps would not be able to recognize dates after 2000 and would glitch to the point of no return? Well, at least then people foresaw the problem and worked to resolve the issues beforehand. As reported by CNET, apparently, the French company, named Parkeon, which created the credit card payment system for the NYC parking meters, neglected to foresee that the meter software would need to recognize dates after 2020. “The software in the model of Parkeon meter used in New York City had established an end date of January 1, 2020, and had never been updated by the company,” the DOT said in a statement on Thursday.
This is what has been causing parking meters across the Big Apple to reject people’s credit and debit cards, causing a great inconvenience throughout. It’s been almost like traveling back in time to the days when car commuters needed to stock up on quarters to pay meters with. The machines are still accepting the coins, although the ParkNYC app is also a viable option and is still working. Officials have said that drivers who don’t pay will be ticketed.
Parkeon blamed the problem on an anti-fraud security setting which disabled their card payment system for any transactions made after the New Year. The company has provided the city DOT with a software fix, but the update must be manually installed into each meter. City workers have been dispatched and are trying to fix the issue. This may prove to be a big job, as the five boroughs of NYC encompass a total of 14,000 meters, covering roughly 85,000 spaces. By Friday night, 1,750 of the city’s meters were repaired, and the DOT said they are training and dispatching additional electricians throughout the weekend. The DOT said it expects all citywide repairs to be completed by Thursday evening, as per ABC7 News.
Flowbird Group, which owns Parkeon, issued a statement assuring it was only a glitch was with the software and not a breach of their system. “Yesterday, NYC DOT had muni meter issues city wide, affecting their ability to accept credit card payments and pre-paid parking cards,” the statement read. “The outage was caused by an anti fraud security setting that disabled card payment beyond Jan. 1 2020. Flowbird, the provider of the parking solution, has immediately provided a software upgrade fix. The solution is now under deployment in the field by DOT crews. Our investigation confirmed that there was no security breach of the system.”
