Kiosk broken? You hold the bag

LOU BALCHER had a feeling about it. A premonition, you might say.

After he parked his 2004 Mazda 6 on 12th Street between Walnut and Locust, on Monday, Aug. 3, he attempted to pay at a kiosk, which didn't accept his credit card.

He tried another credit card. No luck.

He tried cash. Strike three.

The Langhorne resident was running late for an 11 a.m. appointment, "but I saw this Parking Authority person a block away and asked her if she covered 12th Street."

He told her about the nonfunctioning kiosk and she told him she did cover 12th Street but was not the only parking-enforcement officer who did.

"I can't guarantee you won't get a ticket," he says she told him.

You know what's coming. He was ticketed, about 15 minutes after he left a large note on his dashboard saying the kiosk would not accept his payment.

I asked Balcher, 59, who runs a nonprofit, if he had checked to see if any other kiosks were on the block.

"I did not look for another kiosk," he told me. He used a few precious seconds to write the note and then ran to the meeting. He took a few more moments to photograph his car and the note.

I went out and checked. On the block he was ticketed, there are kiosks in front of the Zipcar office, Rossi's hair studio and the Pac-A-Deli.

And that's where, I suspect, his appeal will fall apart. The hearing examiner is sure to ask him (as I once was asked) if he had tried more than one kiosk.

Of course, I've heard many complaints from drivers, finding one kiosk broken and walking down the street to the next, who got ticketed while hunting for one that worked. Parking-enforcement officers are supposed to look out for drivers returning from kiosks, but some don't.

PPA makes it your problem to find a working kiosk if the one closest to your parked car is broken. As a matter of fact, it's policy, I am told by PPA spokesman Marty O'Rourke. "The citizen is expected to obtain a receipt" from a nearby working kiosk, he says.

Balcher tells me that his previous job had him running around town a lot, and he did get a lot of valid parking violations. He also told me that when he had time left on the kiosk ticket he got at one location and tried to use it at another location, he was told that's not permitted.

That's not true, O'Rourke says. A receipt from an unexpired kiosk can be used at another one, "as long as the receipt is not from a 12-hour meter trying to be used at a two-hour meter."

The city has 1,023 kiosks, and because they take three forms of payment - cash, coins, credit cards - O'Rourke says, it is rare for them to be out of service.

Marty, it's happened to me. No kidding.

Here's a kicker: When Balcher told me he told the PEO that the kiosk wasn't working, I wondered why the PEO couldn't check to see if that was true, and, if so, call for service.

O'Rourke says PEOs "cannot check a kiosk."

They should be able to check a kiosk. How hard can that be?

For the current violation, the parking authority told Balcher the kiosk was not broken. He insists it was.

Last Thursday he notified PPA that he's fighting the ticket by mail and demanded "an actual work order" showing that the kiosk had been inspected and found not defective.

We'll see how all this works out.

Phone: 215-854-5977

On Twitter: @StuBykofsky

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