Electronic parking meters in downtown Glendale to be reactivated after glitch

Free parking in downtown Glendale is set to end Monday, when the city plans to reactivate electronic meters after technical issues caused erroneous ticketing and prompted officials to temporarily take them offline.

Since the meters were suspended Aug. 11, parking officers have been manually enforcing time limits only. They will continue to manually monitor the electronic meters for two weeks after the machines are rebooted Monday, officials said.

The meters were taken offline after city officials discovered occasional delays in the wireless communication signal between the electronic meters and hand-held receivers used by parking officers. Patrons paid to park, but the attendants were not always getting the real-time information.

To fix the problem, the city has switched to using its own Wi-Fi and fiber-optic system to send the signals from the meters to the hand-held receivers, rather than the cellular signals that were previously being used. What exactly caused the cellular transmission system to fall out of line and for how long it’s been operating incorrectly is not yet known.

In a statement issued today, Public Works Director Steve Zurn said he was said the business community has been “very pleased with [the parking meters’] success and supportive during the service interruption.”

Lorenz said only a few erroneous tickets have been discovered and they were corrected.