Parking meters overcharge with daylight savings

By: Drivers.com staff

Date: Thursday, 30. September 2010

When daylight savings time changed last Sunday, a bug in some Milwaukee parking meters with older software caused them to drop back two hours instead of one. That meant undeserved parking tickets for some unsuspecting motorists.

There were some 177 electronic parking meters involved and Milwaukee parking employees had to readjust them manually while the city waited for a more permanent fix.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the meters were running a version of Microsoft CE software, and other municipalities and some private operators using this software had similar problems.

Paul Klajbor, Milwaukee parking operations manager, says it's not clear whether Microsoft or the software vendor was the source of the bug.

The city says it can track when motorists put money in the meters and it can back track to void the mistaken tickets if motorists tell them the number of the parking spot and how much they paid. They can call the city at 414-344-0804.