Boston Business Daily

How do Boston parking meters know the 2 hour limit when not expired?

How do Boston meter maids know how long you have been at the same meter when you go over the 2 hr limit? If you feed the meter, how are they able to generate a ticket that knows exactly what time you got there? The tickets are automatically generated from hadn held devices the meter maids carry, and are printed with the orignal time you parked. How do they know that? Can they take a reading off the meter?

Public Comments

1. They mark the tires of cars with chalk and when they come back in 2 hrs. if a car with a marked tire is still there, they ticket it. They have a system with different colors of chalk and the placement of the mark that only they can understand.
2. I always thought it was just from the first time they walked by, or from the chalk marks the other poster mentioned. There wouldn't be a way for the meter to know, because how would it know if it was for the same car or a different patron.