Newly installed parking meters on the streets of Hono­lulu gave some lucky motorists the gift of time.

In some instances over the past week, the new meters allowed up to 24 hours of extra time to drivers in what suddenly became select spots.

The city Department of Transportation Services says that roughly 200 parking meters, from Waikiki to Chinatown, were granting extra time to paying users of devices originally intended to limit on-street parking on public thoroughfares.

“DTS learned on Tuesday, Oct. 10, that some of the meters were displaying longer times on the meter,” DTS spokesperson Travis Ota told the Honolulu Star-­Advertiser via email.

He said the department believes the issue began in January, when about 2,200 wireless credit card parking meters — which used 2G and 3G technology — became inoperable after carrier Verizon implemented a 4G upgrade.

Due to that switchover, Honolulu was forced to offer free parking at affected meters for nine months, from January to September. Free city metered spaces officially ended Sept. 18.

“While the older meters were offline during the period between January and September, parkers were still paying meters via (the) Park Smarter app,” Ota said. “When the new meters were installed and re-connected to the 4G network, the accumulation of previous paid times were displayed.”

The problem, he added, “appears to be a software glitch.”

Now, Honolulu’s parking meter contractor — San Diego-­based IPS Group Inc. — has worked to fix those overly generous machines “and confirmed that the meters will resume normal operations once the time has run out,” said Ota. “It is important to note that any stall that has shown an excess of time over and above what the user paid for will not result in any extra charges to the customer.”

He added that the issue will be resolved as soon as possible.

“At the end of this week, the meters should all be cleared and back to normal operations,” Ota said.

Meanwhile, he said the amount of excess time varied by meter, and DTS notes that the revenues gleaned from its parking meters were lacking: For the week of Oct. 8, those revenues were about $9,000 less than the prior week.

Typically, Honolulu’s parking meters generate about $5 million in revenues to the city each year, according to DTS. During the period of unpaid parking earlier this year, the city estimates it lost about $1.7 million in revenue.

Parking meters in Honolulu, in general, offer only one- to two-hour parking options. On-street parking is enforced from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

In September the city announced it was nearing its goal of installing about 4,200 4G-enabled parking meters across urban Honolulu by the end of this year.

Previously, DTS Director Roger Morton said past issues with the city’s older parking meters would be remedied as new equipment comes online, following the city’s procurement of additional parking meter “control heads” for its municipal system.

“We have installed about 2,100 additional meter heads to make our formerly digital 2G meters compatible now,” Morton said during a Sept. 13 news conference. “These are more advanced models that have more capacity than our last parking meters did.”

Likewise, the city will continue to upgrade its coin-only meters to enable credit card payment. The last 2,100 meters will be installed by the end of this year. Those newly installed meters will be along King Street and other parts of town, city officials said.

Under the city’s $3.5 million contract with IPS Group, new parking meters come with multiple functionalities, allowing users to pay for parking with credit cards or through the city’s mobile payment app, Park Smarter, the city’s only parking payment app, which debuted in February, officials said.

Besides the Park Smarter app, the new meters accept credit and debit cards, coins, as well as other mobile payment services like Apple Pay and Google Pay.

According to Ota, as part of the parking meter contract with the city, there will be ongoing expenses, including for credit card transactions and spare parts.

“The 10-year cost to furnish, install, operate, and provide spare parts for the equipment is $6.6 million, which does not include HPD’s enforcement or coin collection costs,” Ota said.