Do parking tickets make you mad? Listen up.
Washington, D.C. raked in more than $67 million in revenues from parking tickets last year – and in the first five months of 2009 has already taken in $45 million in fines.
Washington is cashing in on your, shall we say, "inability to park legally." D.C. issued 1,465,394 parking tickets last year – in a city with just under 600-thousand people.
"To say that D.C. has an aggressive ticket-writing campaign of picking motorists pockets would be an understatement," says Lon Anderson, AAA's mid-Atlantic representative.
It's a cash bonanza not lost on other cities. Last year, Dallas took in $5.2 million; L.A., $120 million; New York, $624 million. So many parking tickets are being issued, for lawbreakers it's become a sport.
And on TV the tension between ticket-giver and scofflaw has become war. The A&E reality show "Parking Wars," set in Philadelphia, pits real life, aggressive parking ticket agents against people who park illegally. The show has meant cash for Philly, but also some bad PR.
Prospective tourists have sent angry emails to Philadelphia tourism officials. One comment: "Hey I was thinking of coming to Philly. I hear all the great things that are happening there, I've seen their ads, but then I saw 'Parking Wars' and I don't wanna be treated like that, I don't want my car to be treated like that. I'm never coming to your city."
Meryl Levitz, president of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, says the city came up with a new Web marketing campaign to combat the fear of aggressive ticketing.
But there is no such PR fear in Washington D.C. Parking officials have come up with yet another way to catch "illegal parkers." They've mounted cameras on street sweepers to snap scofflaws. That ticket will come in the mail, costing you $60.
A&E had no comment on the controversy in Philadelphia over "Parking Wars," but you'll see the show again in the fall after it wraps up production in Detroit.