Never pitted an entire city, but last friday I got a parking ticket for an expired meter aat Venice beach and now am MAD!!!
Went with a screenwriter pal of mine from high school, parked on a side street near the beach, where they had these “meters” that you don’t put a coin into, but instead swipe a credit card and buy an hour’s worth of time. I was surprised to see that, unlike NYC, when you use of these machines you DON’T get a receipt (it says "no receipt issued’) to stick on your dash to show the meterman thast you;'re paid up for the hour (and to use as proof that you paid). Apparently, you’ve supposed to trust that the machine recorded (and somehow shows the meterguy) that you’re paid up, and if there’s a dispute, you’ve got the credit card transaction as to when you paid.
I was dubious, but my friend was bragging about how sophisticated his city is, how this is much cooler than being issued all sorts of pieces of paper, and I decided what the hell, and went walking on the beach for 50 minutes. When I got back I had a ticket on the windscreen of my rental car.
When I contacted the credit card company (Visa), I was surprised to be told that they had no record of any one-dollar transaction with the City of LA on frienday. IOW, the machine told me I was good to park (I forgot what words it flashed me), and I figured I was good for the next hour, when I was not. So I’m pissed at the city of LA for setting a receiptless system that at best confuses people into thinking they’ve paid for a service when they have not, and at worst for rigging a system to reap 50 dollars for an hour’s worth of parking.
It does sound like user error, but have dealt with the parking gestapo in Los Angeles, I believe the OP. Street parking is very difficult to find in much of the city, and posted parking regulations are often confusing, with three different rules (time limits, weekly street sweeping, local resident exceptions) going on at once. If any city is going to use parking tickets as a substitute for tax income, it would be a city with a history of corruption in its law enforcement and a failing infrastructure teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. But I’m just cynical that way.
The Parking Nazis in LA are malicious pricks. I’ve seen them circling around meters with little time left, like a bunch of vultures, salivating at the idea of writing a ticket. I’ve seen them furiously typing away on their pads, trying to issue tickets to taxis letting out passengers in no parking zones.
I was watching that car repo show and they went to get a bike from biker garage. The bikers jumped the repo guy and laid a beating on him, on camera! The police get called and show up a few minutes later, pull their guns and line the bikers up against the wall. Seconds later they storm over and demand the cameras get shut off. I couldn’t help thinking that no matter how badass a biker you are, when the LAPD demands the cameras get shut off -NOW, that’s a bad sign for you bro.
Those wonderful new parking meters - we were trying to go for supper at a place downtown a few Saturdays ago. We found a good spot, hopped out, and went over to the meter. Five minutes later, we hopped in our car and went somewhere else, after not being able to figure out if we still needed to pay for parking and what the rates would be. It doesn’t seem right that they expect you to just pay without any advance knowledge of how much you’ll be paying.
Back in Seaside Heights’ heyday of the late 80’s/early 90’s, my friends and I would do what we referred to as “buying a season pass” for parking.
We’d get a prime parking spot, but not feed the meter. Of course, we’d get parking ticket for this. At the end of the night we’d take the ticket, stick it in the dash box, and when we parked again the next night the ticket went back onto the windshield.
Sure, by the end of the summer the fine would be increased by the fact that the payment date came and went, but the total fines (inevitably, once per season a cop would come by and check the ticket, thus earning a second ticket) were under 100 bucks – a hell of a lot less than it would take to feed the meter every night for an entire summer.
This may work in a busy area, but I tried it in a campus parking lot once and left class to find a second ticket, from the same pseudocop, under my wiper.
A lot’s changed since the 80s, apparently. The fines add up to over $100 pretty quickly, and the Meter Nazis have become more aggressive about checking tickets. I’ve purposely left tickets on my car in efforts to avoid another, and I’d say it has about a 40% success rate.
In the days before you could pay off everything on the internet, you’d have to go in with the ticket (or mail it in), so you wouldn’t have the ticket and envelope to display after paying.
I was talking to parking enforcement in Westwood (one of the toughest parts of town to park in without getting a ticket) one day while I was in college and they told me that it’s totally legal to park in front of a broken meter and that you can fight that ticket.
Of course trying to fight a parking ticket in Los Angeles is insanity in itself.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when that went down.