Parking tickets near Nationals Park rescinded

Nearly fifty Washington Nationals fans who received parking tickets are off the hook. The tickets were distributed after the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT) organized a public campaign to tell drivers that they had to pay for street parking for every Nationals home game (including holidays and Sundays). DDOT admitted that twenty-six parking meters were not working properly on Emancipation Day and Sunday, April 19. No tickets were issued on Emancipation Day. But forty-four parking tickets were written on April 19 for not paying to park. DDOT launched an investigation and discovered that 43 of 44 tickets were written at meters that were not functioning correctly. DDOT asked the Department of Public Works (which wrote the tickets), to cancel the forty-three tickets. DPW Spokeswoman Linda Grant stated that they will put in a request that the tickets be thrown out. She added that DDOT engineers will test all the meters this week to make sure they will accept payment on Sundays and holidays. Engineers will continue working next week, if absolutely necessary. Phipps-Evans announced to fans that all the meters will work properly on Sunday, May 10, when the Nationals host the Atlanta Braves. Programming fixes should ensure that the meters will also work on July 4 and Labor Day as well.