Parking meter jammed? Could be a coin fisher

Having a quarter get stuck in a parking meter once is bad luck. Twice in a day is a spooky coincidence. But have it happen three times in a row within a 10-block radius along south Granville in a two-hour stretch and you know something fishy is afoot.

In fact, a type of fishing is indeed going on. Some individuals have devised a scheme in which they plug parking meters and — after a few drivers have tried to shove coins in, only to have them become stuck — return to fish the coins out.

The City of Vancouver, not surprisingly, isn’t about to share secrets when it comes to how the coins are illegally retrieved. But it’s aware of the problem and works with the Vancouver police to catch the jammers.

“A small percentage of the meters are jammed and then coins are retrieved by what we call ‘fishing,’” said Taryn Scollard, manager of parking operations and enforcement for the City of Vancouver.

“We don’t really want to spread the information (as to how it’s done), but some of them use magnets, others pinching devices.”

On a typical day, 100 to 150 of Vancouver’s 10,000 parking meters are malfunctioning for some reason or another.

Of those, a small amount have been jammed on purpose by drivers who think they can get away without paying because of a meter that doesn’t work. The rest are jammed by a growing group of coin-fishers.

“It’s been a problem for at least a decade,” Scollard said. “It ebbs and flows, but it seems to have got worse over the last few years.”

The city collects $40 million a year from coins in parking meters and another $20 million from credit-card and phone payments.

The city, citing the $50,000 a year it was spending fixing meters vandalized by jammers, introduced meters that accept credit cards in 2010. Pay-by-phone parking went into effect four years earlier.

Scollard asked drivers to call the number found on meters if they come across one that’s plugged. And she reminded them that a plugged meter is not a park-for-free invite.

“You wouldn’t not get a ticket by leaving a note on your window,” she said.