The Y2K bug has struck Big Apple drivers — two decades later.
Credit cards are being declined at city parking meters across the five boroughs after a software bug took the payment option offline in the New Year, according to the city’s Department of Transporta🅘tion.
Meter software was only configured to receive credit card payments up to Jan. 1, 2020 — and was never updated, resulting in the rejections, a DOT spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.
The agency is now working through the city’s 14,000 meters one by one to fix the problem, focusing first on the busiest parking spots. As of Friday evening, more than 1,750 meters were repaired–or about 12.5 percent. All are expected to be fixed by Thursday evening, according to the DOT.
“We are training and deploying additional electricians this weekend who will be working 12-hour shifts, with crews in thꦜe field 24 hours a day,” the rep said.
“DOT wi🅺ll ༺issue status updates via social media throughout the weekend.”
The DOT still doesn’t have a way to address tickets issued during the outage, and said it will work something out with the Department of Finance.
Each day, the city on average collects more than $700,000 in meter revenue as wellไ as another $1.4 million daily from all parking tickets.
Meters can still take cards and mobile payments through the city’s ParkNYC app, but card𒀰-carrying drivers were fuming Friday.
“It mak💮es me upset. It was like a wild goose chase,” said Izzy Meth, 43, who desperately tried to park at a metered꧒ spot using a credit card on the Upper West Side so he could clean out his late father’s apartment.
“I went to two [meters] on West 86th [Street] and two on Amsterdam Avenue and none of them would take my card,” Izzy said, adding, “the city should have been more responsible and think about these🎃 things. It reminds me of Y2K.”
One man, who only identified himself as William, 45, sa🐻id he parked his car at a metered spot on Amsterdam Avenue andꦅ received a $65 ticket for not having a valid receipt visible on the dashboard.
“I didn’t♉ have any [coins] and I tried to use [a credit card] here, but it didn’t work,” the sheet metal worker said. “It’s not my fault. It’s the city’s fault. I should not get a ticket. I s﷽houldn’t have to pay it.”
Motorists also vented on social media, and filed at least 100 complainཧts of broken meters via 311 since Wednesday, .
“What happens when I don’t have a smar🌃tphone or $12 in coins just laying around ? #crooks” who reported the outage at the Staten Island Ferry parking lot.
Others couldn’t catch a break using coins, either.
“Excuse me but I tried 2 parking meters in Astoria today and they did not take my coins either,” . “I came in from out of town to visit my old neighborhood and was forced to load $25 on the app for 2 hours!!! Sca⛄m!!! I want my money back.”
The software, from the mobility company Parkeon, affected meters across the world, accor🎐ding to the DOT.
A spokesperson for Parkeon said in a statement the meter outage “was caused by an anti-fraud secu﷽rity setting that disabled card paym🅺ent beyond Jan. 1, 2020.”
“Flowbir♏d, the provider of the parking solution, has immediately provided a software upgrade fix,” the spokesperson said. “The solution is now under deployment in the field by DOT crews. Our investigation confirmed that there was no security breach of the system.”
Officiaꦜls apparently learn⛎ed about the problem through complaints posted on social media, according to a source familiar with the matter.
“If they knew about it before it was a problem they would have fixed it,” the source said.
The city couldn’t say when the meters will all be fixed.
Additional reporting by Natalie Musumeci
