Several malfunctioning parking meters in one of the most
utilized campus lots may have short-changed hundreds of people,
leading to the possibility of parking tickets being written in
error.
The Daily Bruin conducted a monthlong survey of metered parking
in Lot 6 and found several of the 66 meters in the lot ““ five
of the 26 tested ““ consistently did not credit time
accurately.
The meters were faulty in one of two ways: They credited for
less time than paid for or they did not credit time at all at
certain intervals.
Renee Fortier, director of UCLA Transportation Services, said no
calls had been received on the meters.
Transportation Services regularly checks for broken or jammed
meters and responds to reports of faulty meters promptly, Fortier
added.
A sign displaying how to report broken meters is displayed
prominently outside campus parking lots.
At 25 cents for eight minutes, the cost of metered parking at
UCLA exceeds the rates of Westwood and nearby colleges.
UCLA’s rates are too high to lose additional time to
broken meters, said Jenni Fulmer, a recent UCLA graduate who came
to campus this week to work out at the Wooden Center.
“They already charge more than any other place I’ve
seen,” Fulmer said. “That should give them enough
income to maintain the meters properly.”
Adam Pingel, a computer science graduate student, said he had
frequently noticed meters giving him seven minutes per quarter
instead of eight.
He said worrying about whether he would be credited the correct
amount of time was a hassle.
“It takes an enormous handful of quarters just to be able
to park for a few hours,” Pingel said. “It’s
really inconvenient to have to add that concern and to lose as much
as 12.5 percent of what you pay for.”
Some students said transportation services should not ticket so
rigorously, as some meters do not work properly.
Meters account for less than 2 percent of UCLA’s parking
spaces ““ 345 of the school’s 22,000 ““ but expired
meter violations account for about 30 percent of parking
violations, according to documents provided by Transportation
Services.
This may be due in part to an aggressive approach taken by some
parking enforcement officials to ticketing for expired meters.
Parking enforcement officers sometimes wait by vehicles parked
at a nearly expired meter to write a ticket.
One officer said he would "come back around" to a vehicle whose
meter was about to expire before continuing to other levels of the
parking lot.
Not every parking enforcement officer will ticket so rigorously,
said Manual Franco, a parking enforcement officer.
“With every job you get a broad spectrum of
employees,” Franco said. “Some will follow the letter
of the law, while others will follow the spirit of the
law.”
Many students are familiar with the aggressive parking
enforcement.
At peak hours, two officers can be working the same parking lot,
and officers often work one parking lot throughout the day.
Parking enforcement officers write an average of 30 or more
citations a day, according to Franco and several others.
But Franco said transportation services had not set a parking
ticket quota for officers.
Establishing parking ticket quotas at public universities was
banned by the state Legislature in January 2003.
Though there are no quotas, Transportation Services does chart
the number of tickets written per month by each officer and
compares them, Franco said.
“As long as you fall within the average, you’re
OK,” he added.
Fortier said Transportation Services does not cite vehicles at
meters reported as or found to be broken.
Several of the short-changing meters had not been fixed as of
May 5, though others read “dead” or
“failed.”
Meter maintenance and error checking are handled by meter
collectors, and broken meter complaints can be reported to
Transportation Services by calling a number posted outside each
parking lot.
When a meter collector removes the money from a meter he also
looks for a dead battery or a jam.
Pingel said he never reported the short-changing meters because
of the inconvenience of doing so.
“The pain is not worth doing anything about it,” he
said.
Another student disagreed.
“I wouldn’t go to Transportation, but I would
probably call it in,” said Brenda Chuy, a fourth-year
sociology student.