It's so cold in Sudbury not even parking meters want to work

It's the little things in winter that can wear a person down.

It starts with finally findingthat parking spot of your dreams, but thenstanding in a snowdrift, frozen fingers fumbling with coins, the parking meter will only display a blank stare, or a nonsensical number, or the machine won't spit out thepaperyou need to display in order to avoid a parking ticket.

Don't panic.

This experience has been common lately in Greater Sudbury.

The extreme cold may cause parking meter displays to go blank or malfunction saysBrendan Adair,manager of security and bylaw services with the city.

The frigid temperatures couldalso cause delays or problems with pay-and-display machines printing off thepaper ticket that must be displayed on a dashboard.

Adairsays to avoid a ticketcall 311and ask for parking services.

"We always encourage people to give us a call to let us know, first to make sure the problem is related to the weather and not something else. So it lets us diagnose the issue," he says.

"Then also to make sure that we can adequately track their vehicle to make sure that we're not doing any enforcement where they've rightfully paid."

Adair says he has noticed an increase in calls from frustrated customers over the past two weeks.

However, this is likely the last winter for meters and pay-and-display machines.

Improvements coming to Sudbury's downtown parking a parking app and on street pay-by-plate machines will be more resilient to extreme cold temperatures while offering an alternative topayment at a machine.