Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON (WMAL) – More District drivers are returning to their cars to find those dreaded pink parking tickets on their windshields. The number of people getting parking tickets in D.C. had gone down in recent years as more people started paying for meters with ParkMobile, which allows you to add time to your meter without walking back to it. Now the number of parking tickets is on the rise again according to AAA Mid-Atlantic.
“We have seen an evolution in the nature and kind of parking tickets people are getting,” said AAA Mid-Atlantic’s John Townsend.
The most common parking ticket used to be for an expired meter, but now Townsend said those are being replaced by people who get tickets at multi-space meters for not putting parking meter receipts in their windows. In some cases, even those who do put the receipt on their dashboard are getting tickets.
“Most of the time when you get a receipt, you put in on the driver’s side, but in the District you’re required to put it on the opposite side, and many people don’t know that, so they can still be ticketed,” said Townsend.
People who pay with ParkMobile at multi-space meters are not required to display tickets on their dashboards.
Other times people don’t pay at all, or they thought they paid, but the transaction didn’t go through according to Townsend. He said the latter shows there is still a lot of confusion with how to use the high tech smart meter system.
To make matters worse for drivers who are confused by multi-space smart meters or forget to pay, tickets at those meters cost $50 compared to $30 ones given at regular meters.
While all the tickets are hitting driver’s in their wallets, the District’s raking in the cash.
“Getting a parking ticket in District of Columbia is big business,” Townsend said.
Since FY10, D.C. issued 15.7 million parking tickets and made $730 million in parking ticket revenue. Townsend said this is because there is a parking shortage in the District, and the city hasn’t done anything to add additional public spots. During FY18, the District government netted $61.5 million in parking ticket revenue and gave out of an average of 4,692 parking tickets per day.
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