Finding a parking spot with a broken meter may be the New York equivalent of hitting the jackpot — but, thanks to a new iPhone application, everyone can now be a winner.
The free app, called NYC Broken Meters, uses the city’s own data to help motorists starve the meter.
Under city law, drivers are permitted to park at broken-meter spots for at least an hour.
City officials made the data available as part of NYC BigApps, a competition designed to encourage new ways to disseminate existing information.
“This can be a win-win, because it may help motivate the city to fix broken meters,” said Raviv Turner, CEO of Guerillapps, which developed NYC Broken Meters.
“We hope in a subsequent version to let users upload information about broken meters and report it to the city.”
Turner acknowledged that drivers “may not want to let the city know about broken meters.”
The app uses a phone’s GPS position to pinpoint the nearest broken meters on a Google-like map.
Guerillapps is just one of a large number of boutique developers working to mine the city’s data. Others have released apps that provide restaurant-inspection reports or a roundup of every landmark in the five boroughs.
The locations of broken meters were reported by Scout 311, the city’s 15-member inspection team that searches for potholes and other issues that need addressing.
While the Scout 311 list in cludes fewer than 1,000 broken meters, at any given time an es timated 10 per cent of the city’s 57,000 meters are out of service.
A DOT spokesman said broken meters do not stay that way for long.
“DOT routinely inspects every meter in the City approximately once each week and any necessary repairs are made on the spot,” spokesman Montgomery Dean said.
The app, still awaiting approval from the iTunes store, will be available at nycbrokenmeters.com.
City lawmakers, meanwhile, were doing their own part in trying to make parking less painful.
The City Council Transportation Committee yesterday voted 10-1 to override Mayor Bloomberg’s veto of a bill that would give a five-minute grace period to motorists who overrun their time at Muni-Meters.
The full council was expected to follow suit.
Additional reporting by Tom Namako