Several Queens residents who have used the Park NYC app to pay for metered parking on Bell Boulevard in Bayside are growing frustrated that have been getting parking tickets anyway.
While many of these people have been successful in fighting the tickets over the NYC Dispute app, they feel that they shouldn’t even need to worry about doing this in the first place.
While some have wondered whether or not the app was updated to show they used it to pay for metered parking prior to getting ticketed, many more believe that the officers aren’t checking the app before writing the ticket, often fueled by the idea that this makes it easier for the officers to meet their parking ticket quotas.
One resident said she has been ticketed three times on Bell Boulevard over the last seven months. In each case, she had used the Park NYC app to pay for parking. She emphasized that Bell Boulevard is the only place in New York City where she’s run into this issue.
“The first time, I even showed the currently active session to the ticketing officer, who did not care and wrote the ticket anyway and asked that I log into the [NYC Dispute] app to dispute it,” she said. “It was always a very time-consuming process, through no fault of my own. What’s the point of having the parking app if you’re not going to be able to use it? I’ve now decided I won’t use the [Park NYC] app anymore.”
While she was successful in disputing the first two tickets on the app, this resident couldn’t do so for the most recent ticket, from earlier in July. She believes this outcome occurred because she expressed her frustration in the complaint on the app, accusing the ticketing officers of either being too lazy to check the app or purposefully ignoring the app in order to increase their ticketing numbers. Now, she’s appealing the ruling in court, costing her both money and time.
In the cases of the first two tickets, she provided screenshots of the payments on the app as proof she paid to park. While she did the same thing for the third incident, she was told there was no proof of payment because the license plate of the car didn’t match what was put in the app, though she disputes this.
Some other residents in the area have resorted to taking extra precautionary measures in order to avoid getting ticketed.
“I started putting a sign on my dashboard telling officers to ‘Check their computer, I paid on the app,’ a Queensboro Hill resident said. “Remember we are dealing with city agents.”
Each metered parking ticket on Bell Boulevard has a fine of $35. A Department of Transportation (DOT) spokesperson told QNS the agency is looking into the matter.
However, a police spokesperson said they weren’t seeing many of these issues.
“The NYPD’s automated summons enforcement system has been checked and information is being uploaded properly and there are no outages reported,” the police spokesperson told QNS. “If a motorist has proof of payment in the appropriate zone either before or within five minutes of the summons being issued, they can forward appropriate documentation to the Department of Finance for adjudication.”
This story was updated at 3 p.m. on July 27.
