Some Evanston parking meters are still claiming to be on “Holiday” three days after the Memorial Day holiday ended, but City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz says he still hopes they’ll all be back in service by sometime Friday.
Bobkiewicz says an effort to update the meters wirelessly on Wednesday got many of them working temporarily, but “did not hold.”
So crews from the city’s meter vendor, Civic Smart, have had to take each meter out of its housing and manually upload new software to it from a laptop computer.
Bobkiewicz says he’s not sure how many meters have actually been fixed at this point, but still hopes to get the process completed within the next day.
The city typically makes about $8,000 a day in parking meter revenue. Bobkiewicz has said he expects Civic Smart to make good any revenue loss from the meter screwup.
Memorial Day was the first time the city tried out a feature of the meters that lets them display the “Holiday” message on days when meter parking is supposed to be free.
Update 8:45 p.m. 6/2/17: Bobkiewicz says most of the City’s parking meters are back in service. But meters south of the Dempster-Chicago business district, mostly located adjacent to Main and Howard Streets still need repairs.
He says all are expected to be operational by Saturday afternoon.
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