The vast majority of Philadelphia Parking Authority tickets are invalid?

By William Entriken

34 minutes

Claim:

A majority of Philadelphia parking tickets are invalid because of lackadaisical meter inspections.

Result

Meter inspection laws have been relaxed, and you won’t be able to fight a ticket with the available public information.

The law

In Pennsylvania, parking meters are regulated under agriculture law as weight and measure devices (3 Pa. Code § 41.02). CBS put out an article, widely cited, that parking meters must be recertified every 3 years and that the majority of Philadelphia Parking tickets are invalid because the meters haven’t been certified. I can’t find the original law, but today the regulation is every 5 years (3 Pa. Code § 41.12 b.2).

Related links

Data

This is a list of all Philadelphia parking meter inspections in 2005 through 2007. Formatted based on data from CBS.

And it appears to be less than the full list of meters, so apparently the other meters were not inspected.

Comments

William, The information you are citing is from 2008. The same year the Department of Weights and Measures certified PPA meter mechanics the authority to certify the parking meters. All PPA meters have been certified by PPA personnel throughout this year 2012. If you have any other questions or concerns please visit our Support Tab and we'll be more then glad to help: https://www.facebook.com/PhilaPark/app_227698805184 You can also find us on Twitter for updates & information: @PhilaParking

Philadelphia Parking Authority

Please discuss this topic anywhere and let me know any great comments or media coverage I should link here.