NYPD officers will check the status of your parking by using handheld devices that check license plates.

The meters will still take conventional payments, and the eventual goal is to upgrade all 85,000 Muni-Meter spots by the end of summer 2017. It's too soon to say how well ParkNYC will work in practice, as urban tech can occasionally go wrong (just ask NYC about the changes it made to its gigabit internet kiosks). If it does work as promised, though, it should make driving the city's chaotic streets a little less stressful.