Exploiting my City's Parking System

[wolverine]

I have a dillemma.

In the past few weeks, the cold weather, with the combination of exams and my inability to get up for class on time have caused me to drive to my classes at my university and park in a visitor's lot. Parking is scarce where I live, so I find it to be a luxury to drive to class, but it does come with a price tag. It's about a dollar an hour, and my classes usually run all day. If I was to pay for a full day, it would cost about $12. However, if I don't pay, I will receive a parking fine that if paid on the same day, it only costs $6. The university has the city handle it's parking tickets, and the office where I handle these matters is conveniently close to my house. I pay them by dropping six dollars in cash in the provided envelope with my citation in a drop box.

So, as a poor college student, this is the most effective way to save money on parking. However, despite the fact that I pay my fines on the same day I receive the ticket, I'm wondering if this abuse of the system will catch on eventually, and this could go on my record. Does anyone know what happens in these types of situations? I'm being good in that I'm paying my fines immediately, but at the same time I'm exploiting the city by not paying twice as much to park legally.

[Snowguy716]

Here's the thing though. Once you get a certain number of tickets, they can slap a larger fine on you or tow your car. (At least here they can).

Parking permits at my university are $75/yr. and a lot of people skip paying for them by parking their cars in visitor lots. Eventually the parking police catch on and they'll slap a ticket on, so the people start moving their cars to different spots and leaving the ticket on there. They're too lazy to actually check the ticket.

But $12/day? Holy crap. I don't know what to tell you. Is there a longer pass you can pay for that might be cheaper? Like a monthly pass or something?

[Recchia]

My friend used to do that at a school in Boston, til his car got booted. Find out if your school does that.

[lammius]

Yeah my undergrad university would give out tickets until your 11th offense, after which they boot you. $6 though? that's a steal!

[dtown]

I dont know man. Your car might get boted or towed. Maybe you should just take the bus?

[monsoon]

I don't know. I guess it depends upon who is issuing the ticket. Some places around here will clamp your car and it costs $150 to get it taken off, but those are private lots so there isn't any record to speak of. If the city tows your car its very expensive to get it back due to the fines and you have to pay the tow truck driver as well. I don't know if it does anything to your driving record or not however.

[wolverine]

My car won't get booted, but I'm worried it might get towed. My friend got his towed, but I belive he had accumulated a few parking tickets and hadn't paid them.

Today I got lucky though. I parked on campus all day without paying and didn't get a ticket!

[lammius]

Ok, but I think you're playing with fire!

[runawayjim]

in most places, as long as you're paying the tickets, they don't boot or tow your car, no matter how many tickets you get. those methods are usually only performed on cars that have several outstanding tickets, and generally, it's the boot because the city doesn't get paid to tow your car, the towing company does. but the city does get paid to take the boot off, which is usually quite expensive. you have to remember, they think of these tickets as income, even though the income is less than if you paid the correct amount. what may end up happening is they re-think their fines and increase them to something like $20 per ticket.