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by thrownaway2424 4173 days ago
The idea that parking fines are a source of significant revenue is pretty bogus. NYC for example collects around $500m in fines while spending about $200m for the NYPD division of traffic control and another $270m for the Department of Finance (which collects the fines) and while these costs are not entirely dedicated to the purpose of issuing tickets, it gives you a sense of the scale of net revenues from parking tickets (low hundreds of millions at most) compared to a city budget of over $75 billion.

Parking tickets exist because public property in urban areas is extremely valuable and the opportunity cost of letting some scofflaw waste the space is enormous.
1 comments
csours 4173 days ago
It depends on the city. After Chicago 'sold' the right to collect parking fees, fees increased and allegations of wrongful ticketing skyrocketed.

Google 'chicago parking meter privatization' for more info (some of it likely to be biased).

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thrownaway2424 4173 days ago
Which pretty well proves that the city wasn't in it for the money before they sold the rights.
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csours 4173 days ago
Logic does not compute. If they weren't in it for the money, why would they sell it for money?

I think the better argument is that they were incompetent.

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swyman 4173 days ago
That's really, really lazy logic you're (not) trying to compute. If the send-your-enemies-glitter guy wasn't in it for the money, why'd he sell his site for money?

Also Chicago sold the rights in a fire sale due to some combination of budget shortfall, corruption, and incompetence. After the fact, independent appraisers found the contract should have been worth more than $2B, but was sold for just over $1B.

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