Guess which city has the most expensive parking tickets?
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From a story on priceonomics:
San Francisco has the most expensive parking tickets in the entire United States...In fact, at $74 a pop, the city's standard parking tickets are the most expensive in the country---by nearly $10. To put this fee into perspective, Boston, which has roughly the same land area and a slightly smaller population, only charges $25, one-third of SF's fine, for a meter violation (San Francisco Parking Meters: A $130MM Industry).
The story provides the latest numbers on how much the city makes from parking meters and parking tickets:
Note how much more the city makes on parking tickets than it does on parking meters.
But the story doesn't include numbers that show even more income that City Hall and the MTA get from preying on motorists who drive what the bike people call "death monsters": $39 million[Later: Actually, that was more than $80 million when I made this post] from the 20 parking garages the city owns and $9 million from the residential parking program. Add it all up, and the city makes more than $182 million every year from those who drive in San Francisco (Transportation Fact Sheet).
Another number to keep in mind: there are more than 6,000 people working in the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
Thanks to Meter Madness for the link.
Labels: Anti-Car, City Government, Muni, Parking
posted by Rob Anderson @ 4:19 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
Fee and penalty based budgets are designed for people to fail. If people start avoiding the fines, then the gov't will change the fines. What a crappy cycle.
This is what happened back in 2010, when the MTA learned that their income from parking tickets dipped during the Great Recession. It then had to scramble to keep the money coming by imposing quotas for the meter maids/guys.
It is a Catch 22 situation with MTA always on the winning side.
When a driver is hit with a heavy parking citation they learn a lesson and avoid repeating the same mistake. Other drivers follow suit and get fewer citations. This means less revenue for MTA.
Then MTA raises citation fees to collect the same amount of revenues. A win-win for MTA.
When a car gets towed in Houston the fee is $150. Why is a towing fee $350 in SF?
Actually they should be higher to help fill the deficit drivers face for the tax revenue from driving not coming close to paying for the tax dollars spent to accommodate them.
Does Anonymous at 2:01pm not use sidewalks, or streets for other uses besides a car (Bus, bike, ambulance, walk, etc.?) If so their trip down a street would be subsidized by taxpayers also.
Streets are necessary items of an urban fabric for emergency services, trash, sewer, water and power, as well as vehicles, sidewalks, deliveries and transit.
The Bike People just love to claim drivers are subsidized when in fact EVERYONE uses city streets, whether they own a car, or not.
Instead of increasing fines the city could raise revenue by requiring cyclists to buy yearly licenses.
Yes, Lex. Excellent idea. Start making the cyclists pay a small, but legitimate registration fee.
Excellent idea. Let's charge bikes for the wear and tear that they cause to the city streets. Given the amount of that wear and tear, the administration and enforcement of the fees will be more than what is collected, so we'll be losing money, which we can recoup by increasing the fine of parking tickets.
It's NOT about the wear and tear. It's about the cost of installing all of the new bike lane markings and stripings. They should pay for that.
Haha this blog is gonna be such a great artifact once SF's streets are fixed and private car trips make up just a fraction of total trips. I'll show it to my kids so they can see what one old man once thought!
Now the crazy streetsblog anarchist fuckheads are trying to stop Ed Lee from repealing the communist Sunday parking metering. Using money from god fearing christians who are going to church by giving them parking tickets so that useless San Francisco hipsters who ride the urine soaked MUNI buses. This is bullshit! I will NEVER ride one of those moving homeless encampments of a MUNI bus instead of my car! Have you seen the human filth that is the average MUNI rider!!!
Yep that white paint to demarcate a bike lane sure is expensive! And a whole 3 inches wide!
York, Maine parking ticket-$50
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