The city's intention, officials said months ago, was to free up parking for visitors using local businesses. Hoboken has numerous popular shops and acclaimed restaurants. In fact, the city announced earlier on Monday that they are offering lots of free parking specials now through the holidays. (click to find out more.) But apparently, there are problems that lead to incorrect booting.
When Fox 5 investigated for its 10 o'clock report Monday night, they found out that people who park for a few minutes, leave town, and come back hours later are sometimes being incorrectly booted, as if they were here the whole time. Fox 5 found new residents and visitors who made that complaint, so they tried it with an undercover van of their own. They parked in Hoboken for a few minutes, spent time in Edgewater, and returned later -- only to be booted within an hour of their return.
When the van was booted, the newscaster showed receipts to the Parking Utility worker receipts to prove he'd been in Edgewater, and the worker said he would have to fight it in court.
The Fox 5 report also showed a man receiving a ticket for not paying a meter machine, even though the signage didn't tell him that the machine was far up the block and not close to where he parked.
The report then showed that Hoboken boasted on its website of increasing revenues via the Parking Utility, by as much as $1 million from 2009 to 2010.
The Fox 5 reporter interviewed Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who said that the city's signs were beyond what the state law mandated. But she then said that resident feedback is important, and she'll look into it.
Recently, the Hoboken Reporter reported on a different situation -- a man who had his parking ticket dropped, but the city refused to reimburse him for the towing fee.
Will these loopholes be closed, or the signage changed? Any updates will be published.
What do you think? Comment below!
When other bloggers are in the news, the Hoboken Reporter usualy states that in the first paragraph.
i still think the 4 hour rule is stupid, and in any event parking rules shouldn't be a game of "gotcha." If a reasonable person reading the sign wouldn't understand the rule, then the sign and maybe the rule as well is bad. I think the City would get just as much revenue and free up just as many spots applying the rule to each location rather than city wide and it could be enforced more fairly. In any event - the sign needs to reflect the rule. Either keep the signs as is and change the rule to what the sign seems to say or keep the rule and make the signs crystal clear.
The muni-meter sign issue is BS. The signs are visible from everywhere, including on the block they filmed. Playing games with the camera angle is not an unusual "expose" tactic, but that Klaussen makes one wonder who might have pitched this piece to FOX news and why.
The point on the 4 hour parking is fair. The signs suck - nobody would ever read those signs and understand that the rule applied to more than the one spot. And once a car has been moved, there's no way to monitor how long its been parked in Hoboken for. At a minimum, the signs need to be changed, though personally I think its a stupid rule that should be scrapped. If someone wants to
spend the time to move their car every 4 hours, let them. Most people wont do that - they will overstay in the same spot hoping not to get ticketed and we can and should vigorously enforcing that.
The HPU workers did the right thing giving the tickets. Hoboken has a problem with arbitrary enforcement of the rules. A sign of progress, I heard a cop say his private car got a parking ticket (his first ever)
I also thought it was unfair to highlight the HPU revenues without mentioning the indictment of the previous HPU head for theft. Rising enforcement is a good sign of a cleaned up parking utility.