People are apprehensive about the parking downtown anyway, so why do we feel is necessary to give them a couple of more reasons to not like the downtown parking situation?
Also -
parking officials can and do ticket vehicles every hour that are at expired meters
I hate to use the phrase 'double Jeopardy' for something as minor as a parking ticket, but doesn't it seem one ticket for one offense? The car hasn't moved, so how can you get several tickets for one violation?
The reason they are looking to increase the fines and fees is so the Parking control can pay for itself. Maybe they could lower the operating costs if the maids walked instead of constant process of: drive-stop-park of their new Hybrid Escapes.
A couple of tips to parking downtown -
The meter maids are city employees, so they do not work until the sign advertised time of 6 p.m., it is usually only until about 4:30.
Also, it is free parking on- Nights, Weekends, federal holidays.
11 comments:
I park downtown maybe five times a year. The use of metered parking would happen maybe three times.
Parking Enforcement should pay its own way. While I have not studied the need of trucks/cars over walking officers is mute.
People know for the most part how long they are going to spend doing something downtown. If not, then they should park in a lot or garage.
Having heard that we have people who collect tickets all day over parking in lots or a garage then they can well afford to pay $75.00. At some point their ego will give way to breaking the law is just not worth it.
Just maybe your mom or grand mother could use that space to park near a place they had to visit downtown.
PLENTY OF PARKING
I CAN PARK ON THE COURTHOUSE GREEN-GIGGLES
DRIVE DOWN HARRISON
NO HARRISON SQUARE YET-GIGGLES
PARK ON CALHOUN
DRIVE STRAIGHT DOWN TO BISHOP LUERS
TAKE A LEFT
PARK IN THE PARKING LOT
SLEEP IN YOUR VAN
-ROACH
x-wire.blogspot.com
"City meters currently charge 25 cents an hour."
These highway robbery parking prices are going to bankrupt us Fort Wayneians.
Roach, what the hell are you rambling about?
"While presenting her 2008 city budget to the council, Kennedy said her department has collected $308,621 in parking violations and $148,034 in meter fees this year through August."
Wow, the amount of money that the City collects in parking fines is more than double the money that it collects from the meters. That's pretty crazy.
AWG, the reason for that is simple. It only costs 25 cents for an hour of parking. First parking ticket is $5.00. Which equals 20 hours of parking.
Kennedy claims she is setting on a ton of money in unpaid overtime parking tickets.
The city has officially declared that parking is free downtown after 5pm. They simply have not updated the signs.
The purpose of fines and fees is not necessarily to raise revenue, but to make sure somebody doesn't leave their car all day in one spot.
Multiple tickets are perfectly justified. Why should a guy parked 5 minutes over the limit pay the same fine as a guy who illegally parked all day?
Bob, are you mad about Tracy Warner's column yesterday? Sylvester looked really mad last night.
W.A.C.K.
Bob
Make no mistake about it, in the City of Fort Wayne, where there is plenty of parking everywhere (I look out of my downtown office window now and see plenty of open spaces at 10:40 a.m. on a business day), the prevailing purpose is revenue raising.
There is no parking problem in downtown Fort Wayne! Lets face it, downtown isn't exactly a hip and fun place to be. It's basically dead after 5pm and most of the weekend and you can easily find parking spaces. Harrison Square won't change anything. People will go home to the suburbs after the game ends and downtown will be dead again.
Here is a free analysis for which the City would likely pay $50,000 elsewhere:
Ask any intelligent person why the Downtown is "dead". There is one consistent reply: they don't want to pay for parking, and they don't want to expose themselves to a ticket by parking at a time-limited (e.g. 2-hour limit) meter. They do not want to subject themselves to towing at their own expense by parking at the Cathedral or other private lot. They don't want to park blocks away from their destination, or walk blocks between multiple destinations.
In addition, a statistical analysis of ticketing would likely show that your odds of receiving either a parking or moving violation is substantially larger downtown than elsewhere in the city.
Most retail businesses will avoid Downtown until these concerns are resolved, because there won't be sufficient customer traffic.
The only solution that might work is to remove the parking meters, and construct large and conveniently-located free parking lots.
Incidentally, today I received a $50 ticket for having an expired plate. The plate expired 3 days ago, and I was carrying my proof of timely online renewal (saved 5 dollars!) in my glove compartment while waiting for the renewed registration to arrive. I was at my location for only thirty minutes, and left 45 unused minutes on the parking meter. Amazingly, even though I was legally parked, they stopped to inspect my barely-expired plate.
How many tickets of even small dollar amount will it take to induce a customer to take his discretionary business elsewhere - where there's FREE PARKING?
Those of you that take exception to this are misunderstanding a basic tenet of economics.
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