Shame, Shame, Shame on Them.

NYC makes about half a billion dollars a year just on parking tickets. People oversleep. People get stuck at work. People get thrown off schedule by children and other responsibilities. We forget to move a car. We park one inch past a line. We are a day or two late renewing a sticker. We're human. New York City is a predator, taking advantage of our human mistakes to target us and fatten an already wasteful budget. For any one of these harmless mistakes, we may be robbed for what to many of us is more money than we earn in an entire day.

But we can fight back. Be as merciless as the City, holding it accountable to every minor detail. In their extreme haste to write tickets and run away in shame, agents make lots of mistakes which invalidate tickets. Hold them accountable to EVERY SINGLE ONE. If you get found guilty and are ordered to pay, you still have the right to appeal. Even if you eventually lose the case, you have the success of knowing that with after all their postage, salary, and paperwork, the city made much less profit from you than if you had paid immediately.

Conflicting, dishonest purposes.

Some may wonder about the purpose of all of these violations and fees. This is particularly because the City is confused and misleading about it. On the surface, it may seem as if parking violations are enforced in order to maintain traffic flow or keep streets clean. However, if this were truly the purpose, rules would be quite different. For example, double parking, which is the only parking violation which actually impedes traffic, would be selectively enforced. In practice, ticket agents prefer to target vehicles where no driver is present.

With regard to Sanitation, to fine someone $55 because a street sweeper missed a section of gutter is not only disproportionate; it's ridiculous. The very same gutter is considered to be the responsibility of the adjacent property owner. In theory two different individuals could be fined a total of $155 because the same cup or napkin was left on the street. What's more, the need for twice or four times weekly sweeping is called into question when you realize streets where there are NO alternate side rules are no dirtier than those which have them.

Many years ago I spoke with an administrative law judge while on the subway. He admitted that he adjudicated parking tickets. He also implied that the very purpose of parking rules is to reduce driving and promote bicycling and public transportation. That is a good attempt at controlling behavior, but also flawed. Many individuals spend miles per week driving only to comply with alternate side parking rules. In my case, many is the time I went outside to move my car with the intention of biking to work, only to get so frustrated that I ended up driving to work.

Parking violations are administered NOT by the Department of Justice, but rather by Finance New York. Way to mask your intentions.