Caption: Despite parking in a legal spot in the 600 block of 2nd Ave. S.., one driver was greeted by this pay station message at two stations near his car. Credit: Paul Walsh

Parking pay stations are up and operating in downtown Minneapolis after being offline for about 3 hours Friday, city officials said.

Pay stations were back in service just after noon.

The outage affected 155 meters in an area bounded by 5th Avenue, Hennepin Avenue, Grant Street and the Mississippi River.

The outage popped up around 9 a.m., a city spokesman said.

A software glitch was responsible for the problem, but the city and the machine's vendor, Cale, were able to rectify the issue, said Casper Hill.

The city had suspended parking enforcement during the outage, he said.