DPW to Post "TicPix" Online

We saw a press release from DPW on Thursday announcing that in some cases images of parking tickets would be posted on DPW's web site within 72 hours after the ticket has been written. DPW is also letting motorists register their email addresses so that they will receive email alerts if they've received a ticket on
a car they've registered.

This is uncomfortably close to the April Fool's joke we posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv on April 1, 2009: "DC to Get First in the Nation Paperless Parking System"

The "uncomfortable" part is that recently on the listserv we've had a number of complaints from people who never received a paper ticket but were notified about an unpaid fine, which included penalties for non-payment. (List members can read the messages in the thread "Visitor Parking Pass Missing Ticket Again" on September 27 and 28.) The April Fool's column was about a DPW plan to make you check the web site
periodically to see if there were any tickets you had to pay.

No, DPW is not going paperless, but they do expect you to pay up, whether you got the initial paper or not. They'd like you to sign up for email alerts so that whenever there is a paper ticket written, it will arrive in your inbox electronically, even if you never saw it on your car. And as proof that it was
really there, you'll be able to see a photo online.

But do take note of the long, long list of exceptions to the photo imaging.

An excerpt of DPW's announcement is below. DPW issued 1.5 million parking tickets last year.

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DPW Announces Parking "Ticpix" Now Available On Web Site

Go to dpw.dc.gov  and click on TicPix to see images of the parking ticket and violation. [The direct link to this page is http://bit.ly/qmsCSd.]

The Trouble with Pay-Station and Pay-by-Phone Parking

As soon as DPW started pulling up the old parking meters and replacing them with "pay stations" that require the driver to walk up the block to buy time, I started worrying if people could get ticketed in the time it took them to return to their cars with the paid receipt. But it never occurred to me that this could happen, even with an individual meter, if you step 20 feet away to get out of the rain while you make a "pay-by-phone" cell phone call.  Here's the story from a very unhappy poster on the Chevy Chase Community Listserv.

I was at Dupont and was running late for an appointment. I was calling in my minutes on the parking meter, I was doing this from inside my car. I ended up hitting a wrong button on my phone and realized I was being transferred to a person...no biggie. As I said, I was running late, so I got out and went to stand by the building entrance because it was raining. No sooner did I reach the building and turn around did I see a ticket writer.

I tried repeatedly to call out to her...ma'am, ms, ms, as I'm making my way back to her (this was approx 20 feet). In that time she did not acknowledge me at all (mind, I'm still on the phone with the meter people). I finally reach the ticket writer and see why she didn't hear me: She had earphones on and was listening to her music obviously loud enough to not hear me approaching her yelling, "ma'am, ms". So, I reach her, tap her shoulder and tell her that I am
currently calling in the time. By this time the lady on the phone is with me. The ticket lady says she can't stop because she has already put the info in and I should not have left the side of my car. But it is raining, I said. A gentleman even stopped and saw the gross injustice here and looked at what she had put into her little machine and said 'you can wipe this out'. She was pretty rude and pulled her name tag up towards my face so I could get a better view.

I went ahead and paid for 90 minutes. [The poster ended with a long paragraph wondering whether it would be worthwhile to contest the $25 ticket, and concluded that she probably would just pay it.]

A DC Parking Ticket You Don't Have to Pay

What kind of parking ticket do you not have to pay? If that sounds like a riddle, well, it is, but it's also the truth: There are some kinds of parking tickets that you can just rip up with abandon. What tickets are those? The parking tickets issued by area universities. Here's what happened to one American University Park area resident, as reported on the Tenleytown listserv:

Today I received a $75 ticket from American University Law School for "Parking in Residential St. While Coming to WCL." I received the ticket on my car which was parked directly in front of my house, five blocks from the law school. I have no connection to Washington College of Law and have never been inside. I have parked my car in front of my house every day for over two years and never received a ticket. I walked around the area and found the ticket issuer and asked him why he had ticketed my car. He said "Well, I can't tell who's a resident and who's a student, so I ticket everyone." Sure enough, every single car in the vicinity of my house had a ticket on it. I could count at least 6 cars of my neighbors, all of whom have no connection to the law school, who had been ticketed.

A list member explained how these tickets come about:

This simply refers back to the neighborhood upset about the law school being built. AU is simply trying to follow up on some rules they apply to their students. One of these rules is that they cannot park in this neighborhood. These tickets only apply to the students and everyone else can discard them. I have received a number over the years and if you look closely the ticket will read that you can ignore it if you are not a student at AU."

American University has a web page explaining their neighborhood parking rules. If you prefer not to have that moment of anxiety when you're walking to your car and see a ticket on the window, even if it's a non-enforceable ticket, you can call American University and have your car put on the do-not-ticket list.

An interesting byproduct of the self-enforcement by American University is that it may be that DC parking officials don't ticket illegally parked cars with the same vigor as they do in other parts of the city. Reports another Tenleytown listserv member: "An MPD officer stopped to ticket a car that was parked facing the wrong way. I asked her whether she also intended to ticket the cars parked in excess of the 2-hour parking signs and she responded that 'AU handles that, they've got their own people' and that DC no longer monitored or issued tickets in that area."

Mr. Kafka and Parking in DC

Getting a parking ticket in DC is usually considered an unpleasant experience, even when you deserve it. Parking in DC is among the most tweeted about subjects when it comes to living in the District of Columbia. (And 'fess up: When we're angry about a parking ticket, that anger often comes about because we know that we earned the ticket. We're just mad that we got caught.) In the olden days, disputing a parking ticket meant taking off a good chunk of the day to dispute the ticket in person.

Now you can dispute a parking ticket online, in your pajamas while having your morning coffee. But just because there's a computer between you and the human at the Department of Motor Vehicles who looks at the data you submit, doesn't make the system perfect. Nor does it mean that the result of your dispute will make any sense. Here's what happened to on DC resident, as reported on the Tenleytown listserv.

I don't mind paying a ticket when I'm wrong, but what happened this week really burns me.

A few nights ago I got a ticket for parking at an expired meter. The sign said it was okay to park after 6:30. I got the ticket at 7:30.

I went to the DMV website, created an account on the adjudication page and contested the ticket - explaining what the sign said and sending pictures of the sign, the meter and the street. On Friday I got an email saying a decision had been made on my case. I logged into the website and there was one line: "Decision: Liable for ticket." So I paid the ticket.

Three days later I got a letter in the mail from DMV listing the facts that I supposedly submitted to them when I contested the ticket. But the facts in their letter were not the facts I submitted.

The letter said, "The respondent reported that the meter was not operating properly because it displayed the word 'fail.'" In fact, I reported that the sign said it was legal to park after 6:30 (along with photographs of said sign and of the meter and of the street).

So they said I was guilty without explaining why and then after I paid the ticket, they sent me a letter explaining why they'd found me guilty. If I'd had that wording before I paid the ticket, I wouldn't have paid the ticket.

And it gets better. I just got the information on how to appeal the appeal. To appeal a $25 ticket, it costs $60.

Still Life with Robin: Meter Meditations

Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parking meters  –Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues, 1965

This may sound strange, but I’m nostalgic for parking meters. You know, the old kind that have an actual time-dial on the front and a slot for your coins. You find an unoccupied space for your car and then you go up to your meter in front and you put in your change. It’s so simple. The main downside was how often the meters were jammed or broken. In DC it’s always been a dicey proposition to park at a broken meter, even if you follow to the letter the procedure for phoning in the meter number and getting a broken-meter confirmation code: Good luck challenging that ticket if you get one. Your safest best has always been to move to another space if you can.

Now we’ve lost those silver-headed meters on poles. Instead we have tall green “pay stations.” You park, and get out of your car and wander halfway down the block looking for machine to take your money. Once you find it, you have to figure out how to pay it, get it to print out that little square of paper that shows the time by which you must vacate the space, and walk back to your car and stick that proof-of-purchase slip on your dashboard. It’s the payment part of the process that usually trips me up. Two-thirds of the time it rejects my credit card. I know my credit is good, because the stores never have any problem with the card; I guess I’m messing up one of the steps in the payment process. The pay stations don’t accept paper money, which is a shame, because it now costs two dollars to park for an hour, and I just can’t manage to maintain the quantity of quarters necessary to keep pace with my parking needs. By the way, this is not a complaint about the price of parking on our city streets: Seven and a half minutes for a quarter is pretty good buy, given that if you go into the nearest CVS with a quarter, you’d be lucky to find even a single piece of candy for that price. Most private lots in the neighborhood would run you between four and ten bucks an hour.

ROSA, RPP, Guest Passes: It's Complicated (Part II)

This article is a continuation of yesterday's discussion of the conflicts between the ROSA, Reciprocity, and RPP Guest Pass parking programs.  If you missed yesterday's article (which explains all the acronyms), it's here.

Can a guest of a DC resident park legally on a street zoned for RPP (Residential Permit Parking) more than once in a 30-day period? William Howland, Director of the Department of Public Works, says no, and says that anyone who does so may be slapped with a $100 ticket. But according to former ANC 3-C Commissioner Richard Rothblum, Howland is misreading the law.

ROSA, RPP, Guest Passes: It's Complicated (Part I)

Where and how are your overnight guests allowed to park if you live on a street zoned for residential parking in DC? This question has been batted back and forth on the Cleveland Park Listserv recently, and the Director of the DPW has weighed in on the matter on Second District Police’s listserv. The multitude of voices, each offering his or her own reading of the parking regs, has only served to make the picture murkier. Here are some of the factors in play.

First, DC will ticket any car parked more than two hours on a zoned residential street unless that car displays an RPP (Residential Parking Permit) sticker for that zone. You can purchase an RPP sticker for your car only if you have registered your car in DC and live on a street zoned for RPP parking. So, for example, if you live in an apartment building on Connecticut Avenue, there’s no way you can get an RPP sticker, no matter where your car is registered.

Now if you do have an RPP sticker, you are also entitled to a guest parking pass to give to your visitors from out of state or from other zones in the city. You might think that this pass would allow your overnight guests to park on the street and not get a ticket. Here’s what happened to a neighbor who had a frequent overnight visitor using the guest pass on his car.