As Earth Day approaches, the city’s Department of Transportation knows it’s not getting every car off the street, but it is taking another long-term approach to helping the environment with new pay-by-plate parking meters.

“We’ve been printing so many receipt papers as part of payment for meters that if we put all of them together we could go from here to [Los Angeles],” DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said.

What You Need To Know

  • The new parking meters will work like the Park NYC app, with plate and payment information going to traffic agents' handheld devices

  • It will eliminate the practice of handing over a receipt with time left to another driver or extending time beyond what's allowed by using the meter and then the app, since the license plate is now associated with both

  • The DOT said this is better for the environment, and for business, with more car turnover

It’s the annual average since the digital meters were fully rolled out in 2015, replacing those very eco-friendly, but very inconvenient coin meters. A total of 1.8 million New Yorkers have already adopted the ParkNYC app, which works in the same way. It syncs the meter or app transactions with NYPD parking enforcement systems so agents know on their devices who has or hasn't paid by plate number.

“So this is also not only saving time for people who have to park at the meters,” Rodriguez said. “Helping small businesses because there will be more rotation.”

This is because you won’t be able to transfer that receipt to another car or extend the time beyond the limit, because the transaction will be tied to your license plate.

There will be no more dealing with card readers that don’t work. The new meters have tap and pay. Even though you don’t need a receipt, you can still get one.

Some drivers are still wary of a paperless system.

“I put it in any way, just in case,” Hector Serrano, a driver, said. “Because you never know with these people. They might give you a ticket, anyway. I’m not taking a chance.”

The new meters will roll out on May 8 in Washington Heights, before gradually moving south to Manhattan, and then to all 80,000 parking spaces in the city.