More Parking Tickets in DC
The Examiner reported yesterday that the District of Columbia Department of Motor Vehicles planning to eliminate allowing drivers to fight DC parking tickets in-person.
Last year, over 54,000 (4%) of the 1.5 million tickets issued were contested in-person. Tickets will only be able to be fought by mail or e-mail.
The DMV also plans to implement a “street-sweeper” camera program in 2008, by installing high-resolution cameras on the city’s fleet of street sweepers.
The concept mounts forward-facing cameras, on transit vehicles and street sweepers, to take photos of an illegally parked car’s license plate. A citation is then mailed to the vehicle’s owner.
San Francisco, Chicago and other cities are looking at some similar forms of enhanced parking ticket enforcement to assist in cracking down on illegal parking.
The elimination of allowing drivers to challenge a ticket in-person will undoubtedly receive criticism, as a potential violation of due process. Perhaps it will receive as much heat as the recent Virginia Civil Remedy Fees for bad drivers.
But could the ellimination of the in-court option just be a smokescreen to divert attention from the plan to implement ticket cameras?
The new ticket camera program is estimated to increase the number of tickets issued (and associated revenue?) by 30% (400,000) in the first year.
I assume if this ticket camera plan works, District parking enforcement officers may start driving the District’s main arteries during rush hour with similar cameras. Now that would be progress - finally finding a way to ticket a high percentage of the drivers that cause traffic snarls by double parking and blocking traffic lanes during rush hour.
Plus, if that happens, repetitive street-blocking delivery trucks (UPS, FedEx and DHL) could single-handedly pay for a new baseball stadium… in about a week.
Images - sweeper - Elgin Sweeper Co., gavel - Flickr
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1 Comment
Not only the street sweepers, but unmarked vans with cameras (2, one each side) on the roof. These vans cruise with the shotgun person working a laptop. They scan meter parkers and write-up cars of “meter feeders” who violate the 2-hour max. I had been moving my car every 2 hours at unmetered street spots and got a $30 ticket with a notation that the car had been moved from one street to another perpendicular street. I plan to fight it but these DC metermaids are relentless. They make their notes then return 2hrs later to write ‘em up. It sux!