When the Seattle Times isn’t bumbling on bike lanes, it’s taking some other old timey perspective on new city issues. Friday’s front pager on Seattle parking fines is no different — but at least there are some useful datapoints in the piece:
Parking enforcement is the scourge of all dense urban areas. Last year, Seattle’s parking-enforcement officers wrote up 508,675 tickets. That’s about one a minute.
And it’s about to get worse.
The city is pushing pay-to-park stations into neighborhoods, replacing spots that had been free. The number of paid spaces has increased from about 9,000 to about 13,500 in the last six years — a 50 percent jump.
About to get worse? Ha ha. That’s progress, Fanny. Welcome to Capitol Hill.
Still, we know that even the most enlightened urbanist doesn’t like a $39 fine. CHS has learned that nearly every ticket issued on the Hill has come at the intersection of Enforcement Ave and Bad Judgement Place. But if you’re curious to see the recent trend, here are the locations for traffic violations in the Capitol Hill area for the last 30 days via the crime map at SeattleCrime.com. We’ve also provided a look at the busiest street parking zone on the Hill around Cal Anderson and Pike/Pine. As you can see, the enforcement distribution appears to be pretty uniform. In other words, nowhere to run to, baby. Nowhere to hide. Seattle Times, you may want to walk up here next time.
Be warned they sit and watch people I saw a guy get a ticket for being in a 3 Min. zone for maybe 7 Minutes I was sitting on my scooter getting situated and witnessed the whole thing. The amount of 3 Min. zones are out of control if they are going to be monitored so heavily they might want to allow 10 Min. I think they can spare someone a few free minutes but I doubt it!
I’ve seen those people ticket 2 of 4 illegally parked cars and ignore the other two. If you’re foolish enough to get in their face about it, they’ll ticket you wherever you are parked and flat-out lie on the ticket about the location of your car. Happened to me several times around Bellevue Avenue.
How do I know they were targeting me? The tickets were for being too close to the corner, yet there were 2 cars between me and the corner. Hm, OOPS! It’s all a scam so the City can rape our pocket books for more money.
SF hands out nearly two million a year so they are clearly trying a little harder. http://www.sfgate.com/maps/parkingtickets/
I had one try to give me a ticket when I was using the pay station … I called parking enforcement and they knew who i was talking about!
You do realize that SF Bay area has 4x the population that Seattle has right? Per capita we write twice as many tickets assuming about the same percentage of people drive/walk there as here.
Erm that should read “Per capita we write half as many tickets”. Sorry :)
I feel you. I have felt the same “targeting” on Bellevue and Melrose. Do the cops remember the cars of the regulars?
A good friend was here for the weekend this summer. He got two parking tickets, both were very questionable, 45.00 each. One was too close to the corner, and I was with him as he made sure he was about a foot short. He paid them and now that is all he remembers of his visit.
He will never visit Seattle again.
To say parking maids are too aggressive is a vast understatement.
I drive every day and have lived in Cap Hill for nine years now. In that time I have NEVER received a single parking ticket.
Cars parked illegally drive me crazy. I’d love for there to be twice the meter maids. Pump out those tickets.
Use your brain when parking, pay when you should, and you’ll never receive a ticket. It’s not rocket science people.
SF population = 808,977
Seattle population = 617,334
SF metro = 4,203,898
Seattle metro = 3,407,848
4x population? Eh?
Sorry – you speak with no knowledge.
The one ticket my friend got was pure bad baloney – he was parked OK.
Of course there is always someone who is just so perfect … congrats.
Read again.
You live in Cap. Hill – so parking in a cave, wow, no wonder no tickets. The secret cave dweller.
Say, are we not biting the hand that feeds us here? Congrats on showing your editorial independence!
Just to be clear, the Seattle Times has never given CHS a dime of its own money. Here are details of the relationship we have on the content front:
http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2009/08/26/chs-in-communit
We were awarded a $5k grant to be part of the content partnership. The money was provided by the Knight Foundation through the Times. This year, the Times was provided with a smaller dollar amount by Knight and decided that no grants would be passed on to partners like CHS.
Instead, we are powered by the local advertising you see on the site and network advertising from the http://seattleindieads.com network that we helped create. Speaking of, when is your Madison Park Blog going to join our ad network :)
Sound Politics cult leader Stefan Sharkansky gets a parking ticket (for not paying!) and riles up his band of rural/exurban supporters over “oppressive” parking regulations. http://soundpolitics.com/archives/014200.html Those clowns have mastered the art of baby-booming ME-centered politics.
SF is not Seattle. Piss off.
Gotta pipe up. Our family accounts for 4 of the .5 mil tickets. All for expired time (sometimes barely – ALL oversights) – hate paying but in all honesty, deserved.
Frankly, parking enforcement is an important civic function. Appreciation is due to the vast majority of the workers.
How about 2 hr parking limits next to the Pacific Place Mall with 50 shops/restaurants and AMC movie theater showing movies in 10 theaters.
After spending over $1000 for a two night birthday stay in Seattle (hotel $729, Restaurants $500, Great Wheel $78 (6 riders celebrating two birthdays), and shopping plus the new Bond movie at Pacific Place…as a reward we get a $44 parking ticket plus $4 for paying on-line because the time limit on 6th Ave parking is 2 hours. I could have run out in the middle of the best Bond movie I have ever seen (I’m 56 and have seen them all numerous times) or take my chances with Seattle Metro…Go figure.