My question is whether they'll actually work legally or keep giving me tickets and towing me for being legally parked.

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Just put a boot in each ticket writer’s trunk, and if they see 3 outstanding tickets already when writing a 4th… just boot too. How fucking hard is it to come up with actual solutions? They need more people to keep doing nothing apparently. This city is run by circus performers.

How do you think the ‘real problems’ get to the location they’re committing real crimes? Via cars with $5,000 in tickets already. Cutting off their proverbial feet could go a long way.

I guess I have no idea how it's done currently but your suggestion makes a ton of sense provided booting is reasonably easy and heavy machinery free (maybe reserving for people with serial moving violations). Having to call someone else to do it is a recipe for futility and waste.

If I remember correctly, last we heard they have two people, that’s it, who are on booting duty. It’s insanity.

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Why boot on 4th? Why boot at all? 4 seems low, but at some point these cars should towed.

>why boot at all

If there aren't enough tow trucks you can boot more -> more enforcement plus more deterrence potentially from all the boots blossoming across the district.

Why only boot for unpaid tickets? Should being able to afford it be carte blanche to do whatever the fuck you want?

Get four tickets in a rolling two-year period (paid or not) lose your privilege for a week. Get two more, a month.

The impact of illegal parking is the same. People won’t be so quick to gamble at the meter or the margins of the posted times, that’s for damn sure.

You're right. Heard similar and wasnt sure if it was towing or booting but it's booting.

And I just saw a vid of a guy installing a boot easily in a minute - maybe the municipal grade ones are different, but your suggestion would 100x enforcement speed.

https://www.npr.org/local/305/2021/12/07/1062056335/d-c-council-prods-public-works-department-over-inadequate-vehicle-booting-operation

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They should start a bounty program like NYC has with idling or get citizens licensed write tickets sort of like we do with the inspection program.

So…boot then tow? Towing with extra steps?

The parking enforcement is already quite responsive to calls, the problem is actually the lack of boots/towing/enforcing payment of tickets.

Because not all boots need end in tows

I think the main issue is that it isn't enough for people to pay fines. The local government and people who actually use the space want cars actually physically moved, depending on the circumstance, of which I'm sure we can both think of many.

Because there’s a difference between delinquency and ADHD. There should also be tiers of parking tickets, like a flagrant violation of parking on the sidewalk or in front of a hydrant, vs an expired meter. I’d maybe agree with you on flagrant violations, but disagree on simple meter violations. I’m also including camera tickets like red lights and speeding in my counting.

> Because there’s a difference between delinquency and ADHD.

Not as far as the impact goes. Four violations is four inconveniences to every law abiding citizen, paid or not. Hell, twenty paid tickets in the same time frame is far worse than four unpaid, wouldn’t you say?

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I would make so much money. Anytime there is an event at capital one, it's nothing but illegally parked cars. I could quit my job.

Yeah I think advocates are interested in it also as a safety measure, by specifically targeting vehicles that have serial moving violations. Or flagrantly bad parking like you mentioned.

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I’d agree with the last sentiment, just have to find a way to weed out the assholes flagrantly violating vs honest mistakes

Twenty “honest mistakes” 🤣

You set the threshold at a number. Otherwise booting someone with four unpaid tickets versus not booting someone for ten paid tickets is just spanking them for being poor.

You get four PAID speed camera tickets in a year? Your car is subject to being towed and impounded for a week if a Reddit warrior looks up your license and reports your location. You can come get your car for free after its penalty has been served.

It’d slow people the fuck down for sure; well to do and poor alike.

I’m agreeing that 20 is flagrant… but 4 parking meters in a year is a bit stringent

I actually saw some from the abandoned vehicle division on my block last week looking at a car that’s been under a tarp for a month now. The car is still there with flat tire under a tarp, but at least they were looking!

DC: “You park ten minutes over the time paid, we WILL get you.” Same DC: “You shoot somebody, nahhh… you are good to go.”

worry about the cars getting broken into not where they park

That's literally what this is. It's the Department of Public Works who is hiring, not police.

…but it doesn’t talk about going after cars that have a ton of tickets. Just parking violations. Did I miss it?

And yet, the same type of people get voted into office.

Yes! This is exactly what’ll lower crime in the city.

Anecdotally, I overstayed my time in a different zone recently. When I got back to my car I had no ticket but three cars had boots. They're all over the place. Seems like the city is really focusing in on boots.

And million dollar tickets for those stupid opaque license plate covers.

One thing that would be great would be for these folks to run the VIN of cars they ticket. When my car was stolen they gave it 4 tickets. Twice when it had stolen plates on it with one tag that literally said Grey honda van and i had a toyota camry.

>The worst is the unit block of 14th Street SW near the Washington Monument. Second, on the list is the 800 block of Maine Avenue SW near the Wharf. In 2022, more than 8,000 parking tickets were issued at these two locations. More than 4,000 citations on 14th street, and just under 4,000 on Maine Avenue

I suspect they could hit this number just going down the street a single time a day. The actual number, if they gave all illegally parked cars tickets, is probably 10 times higher.

They’re relatively responsive but it only works for people who are staying for an hour or two - it doesn’t work so well for things like DoorDash drivers who are parking in a traffic lane for 15 minutes. Some areas (1st & M St) either need cameras or roving patrols.

One thing which could really help would be running a bounty through FHV (roll in deliveries) where cars registered to a rideshare service would need the service to demonstrate that the driver wasn’t working for them in the 15 minutes around a citizen report or they’d get a hefty fine billed to the company. If it paid $20, a ton of people would report that kind of annoyance and charging the companies avoids both the questions about linking a plate to a person or dealing with non-residents and cancelling out their profits would make the companies give their drivers more realistic schedules.

This has nothing to do with anything, but I saw a DC employee writing parking tickets for cars parked on Connecticut Avenue at 4:30 or so this afternoon right outside my humble little condo. Never seen it before!

I'd rather they actually enforce traffic and speeding violations. Illegally parked cars are annoying, not dangerous

Or, restaurants on 14th or 18th St that want to use Door Dash/Uber Eats, agree to bring the food to the curbside and hand it off. Or we ban those services and have restaurants deliver on bikes.

If that’s true I saw them last weekend!

I’d also like to have a policy that unless there’s no garage parking within 10 blocks, a restaurant has street parking reclaimed for pick ups & deliveries while they’re open. Better to avoid the congestion & chaos by benefiting many dozens of people than subsidizing one person over the same timeframe.

I definitely agree that parking illegally in a legal spot should not be the priority but parking in/too close to crosswalks (blocking visibility) is definitely a safety issue for pedestrians

lol…and the mayor bitches about federal workers not coming into the office to spend $17.45 for a shitty breakfast. This is a rich city that acts broke-dick.

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I don't know why they don't just turn the unpaid tickets over to a collection agency after 90 days or so.

The one thing people say about unpaid tickets is "what about the poor" - they could cross check owner against their filed taxes to see if their income is at some percentage of poverty rate, and if so, give them a discount on the ticket and give them a grace period / waive late charges. But either way, if not paid within a specified time, turn them over to collections. And if that doesn't work, and they still don't pay and have multiple outstanding tickets, then boot them / tow them.

I heard there's currently over $300 million in unpaid tickets. A small fraction of that could certainly go to pay for a few more traffic cops, boots and tow trucks.

Ah yes. This will make the city more livable. /s

Just get a few tow trucks and cut them loose on vehicles with outstanding tickets.

Shit you could plant a person on 13th across from the warner every weekday from. 4-7 and just print money.

I’m probably in the minority on this, but I really don’t think they should be cracking down on this. It’s already so fucking hard to park in the city. After going into the office, I get back around 7, by which time there’s no parking places on my street and my only solution is to park “illegally” in a zoned area after it takes 15+ minutes to find a spot.

Lol what about the rising crimes??

'worry about the violations I don't commit, not the ones I do'

I recall hearing people say the cars booted should have serial moving traffic violations, which makes sense given the supply of boots and the vastly higher number of cars with parking violations. No idea if that's in the cards though.

I was wrong, there’s actually 4 for the whole city apparently. 100% more than I originally thought! Lmfao

This. My car got stolen by the infamous Fox5 Kiddie Car Thieves a few times and it always had at the least 5 tickets on it before it was found.

The zone is probably the same as the block where you live… you have a zone pass, right?

Grumpy old man in me coming out, but how TF isn’t parking enforcement the number one finder of stolen cars?! It’s a simple database linkage in my mind

It’s even worse than you think. One time my registration expired while my car was missing (it’s been two weeks and insurance was about to pay out on it) from having been stolen. MPD impounded and then forced me to pay for all the tickets AMD the impound fee in order to get it back. Almost $2000 in ransom later I had my stolen car back.

I will admit some of that blame is on my For waiting until the last minute to renew but damn.

And they just took out about 40 parking spaces on I street SW near the wharf

Which cross streets?

Couldn’t those people be used elsewhere if we applied a bounty program in DC? If citizens were allowed to ticket, they would not need a street ticketing team. The current parking enforcement people could be utilized for booting, vin checking for tow, the stuff they don’t have the manpower or time for now.

Illegally parked cars can block crosswalks, block fire hydrants, park people into their driveways, block sidewalks (not a huge problem for me but if I used a wheelchair or pushed a stroller it would be), limit drivers' visibility of pedestrians, and can create other safety issues. In many cases an illegally parked car isn't dangerous, you're right - but in many cases it is.

Are there other transit options that might work for your situation?

Hope they expand the booting/impounding team. I'm in favor of enforcing parking restrictions, but this also seems like a ripe opportunity to get dangerously used cars off of our streets.

Crime is out of control but let’s write parking tickets?!?

Even before parking, how about after violent crimes and theft the next thing in the list can be the insanely dangerous driving done around here, almost always done by someone with expired temporary Maryland tags.

How about illegally driven cars?

Pay me only in commission and 25% of each ticket cost and I’ll be the best meter maid out there

City focuses effort in all the wrong places. My neighborhood EOTR has no parking signs, and I've taken a break from driving for the last six months , but I still got a ticket for expired tags, when the car wasn't in motion or being used.

Real question - if there’s no enforcement for out of state drivers what’s the point of this ?

Between 6th and 7th

Yeah I'm talking about the normal stuff, not egregious safety hazards

These new cops need to show up when someone’s car is stolen and make a report. I’ve heard a few people where it’s taken ages for the cops to come when they’ve been a victim of grand theft auto. I don’t understand this strategy at all. I fully agree with you re: running the VIN.

Are they going to give us back the street parking restaurants still use as seating?

If my meter expires the city loses money, if I block a fire hydrant people could die. Not the same impact.

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No because people are only reporting illegal parking in flagrant cases, and hardly even that. For every person that reports a car parked on the sidewalk, there are 20+, maybe 50+ people that just walk around it.

Deputizing all meter maids to do booting of serial moving violators though seems ideal

Your tags have to be current if you're parking on the street. They have no way of knowing if you're driving or not.

Another big one is people double parking and blocking traffic, causing the moving lanes to have to unexpectedly merge at an unmarked location. That's definitely a safety hazard.

How about if a plate has five or more tickets the public is allowed to throw a brick through your windshield. If parking enforcement/police can’t immobilize repeat offenders then the general public should. We need some sort of control in the city.

It’s the same drivers that illegally park also have all the moving violations. It’s the same population of drivers/vehicles.

Hey, we are talking about reasons to boot cars here. That a certain amount of unpaid tickets, 4 as suggested by the post I am responding to) is enough to lock up someone’s car.

All I’m saying is that payment vs non-payment shouldn’t factor into the decision to deny someone access to their car.

If you want to boot a car for four hydrant tickets, fine. But boot all the cars that get four hydrant tickets. Not just the ones that don’t pay.

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They need to do something about the fake temporary tags that are rampant in the DMV!!! Tow the fucking cars if they’re known to have fake tags!

Most people dont know but since covid you can all the non-emergency number to report a stolen tag, theft from auto, accident that is a hit and run and I have heard even stolen autos if they didnt just occur.

Don't know about DC, but many cop cars have automated plate scanners the check every plate they see. Good way to catch stolen cars.

They hit my street a few weeks ago and booted the VA-plated car, but skipped the DC-plated car with just as many tickets.

I like that.

Oh my goodness, some of the bounties in NYC are huge. I think it’s half the ticket amount. I don’t even have a shitty job but please believe I would be out there doing my part with my fellow Washingtonians💯. I have a feeling people would be RACING to send the first pic of the violation.

Blow them up

On K NW in Mt. Vernon Triangle all of the street parking was converted to 15 minute pick up/drop off for these kinds of services. Yet 1) people park there and ignore the time limit because there is a lack of enforcement and 2) even when there is space available, the drivers will park illegally because they are too lazy to park on the opposite side of the street or a little further up the block. In fact, they block the alley that provides one way access to parking garages for residents of three buildings and, even when told not to park, do it anyway causing arguments and fights with other drivers just trying to access the alley.

This is why I think we need a citizen bounty system: if they knew anyone on the street could get $50 for a discrete photo and the company would fine them, it’d change the calculation from “I’ll just be a minute, it’s No Enforcement Everyday”.

Pshh, I’d do it for free. The amount of time I’ve spent waiting in my car for someone to move/traffic from double parking is motivation enough.

If the car isn't on the street where else would it go? Alot of the older homes don't have car ports in NE. I would understand if I received it while the car was moving but don't get necessarily why it has to have current tags if it's not being used.

Should I just remove the plates.

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They do go to a collections agency, but they can’t make out of state drivers pay so they ignore them.

Collections agencies can and do ruin peoples' credit reports if they don't pay.

Since these fines are sent by the DMV(or whatever it’s called in DC) of DC with no legal recourse, they cannot be put on your credit.

Why not? If you're right, it seems quite bizarre that a private company can put a late payment on your credit report yet an official government agency collecting a legal and lawful fine cannot?

On another note, I do think they have legal recourse. I think they are just not exercising it effectively.

Not bizarre at all. You usually sign some sort of agreement with a company you owe a debt to. A driver from Virginia or Maryland didn't sign one with DC DDOT. If DC police issued the tickets and you could challenge it in court, that would be a different story. DC specifically doesn't do it that way. Therefore, if you're out of state, you don't have to pay. https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/marylanders-and-virginians-owe-75-of-unpaid-dc-photo-tickets-according-to-ddot-and-mva-report/65-021cd138-aab7-4d82-9a9f-c24f2d00d208

Your drivers license and vehicle registrations are the agreements you signed that make you liable and subject to traffic laws. It doesn't matter what jurisdiction. Just because you're licensed and registered in one state doesn't magically get you off the hook in a different state. Try convincing a state trooper who pulls you over in another state otherwise. The internet is chock full of hilarious videos of people who believed that and failed - particularly sovereign citizens.

You're talking about what you feel is right vs what the law actually is. I even included an article. Read it.

Nothing in your article actually says there is no legal recourse. It says Bowser asked VA and MD for help, but that VA and MD refused to do anything to help.

I'd like to see you back up your claims with some actual law or court precedent that says unpaid fines cannot be turned over to collections agencies, or that the traffic laws of one jurisdiction do not apply to drivers from another jurisdiction.

I can't prove this negative for you, but what I will say is that I have a 760+ credit score and 2 camera tickets that I never intend to pay that are two+ years old that aren't on my credit despite the collection letters I get from some company in Chicago.