The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

Post by woodman » Thu, May 12, 2016, 5:48 PM UTC

philrapo wrote: post #161

ComteDeLaFere wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this. NYC issues ~$500 mil in parking tickets per year. If this were a rational issue, someone would look at that and say "Wow. We must be doing something wrong, this is way too many tickets written. Are the street signs clear enough?" I'm kind of making fun, but they don't want to fix the problem because those tickets are a genuine revenue stream for the city. When the revenue from parking tickets goes down, e…

A different rational response could be to raise parking ticket prices. I live in NYC. Parking here is so expensive that paying for a parking ticket (if you happen to get caught parking illegally) is cheaper than paying for the parking garage! A monthly parking garage in my neighborhood (west village, manhattan) can cost $700-800. Parking on the street is not a perfect substitute, but I can get 10-12 parking tickets a…

Post by darpa_escapee » Thu, May 12, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

gshulegaard wrote: post #13

parennoob wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they thanked him means exactly zero if they don't give back the money that they got from people who were lawfully parked, but still got erroneously fined by the department for reasons that directly contradict existing law . It is easy to give verbal apologies (especially using hedging words like “....recent, abstruse change in the parking rules.” If the police are so confused by abstruse changes in the…

I respectfully disagree. An error was identified, communicated, and acted upon as a result of open data. Specifically, it became known that due to inadequate training practices patrol officers were unawares of the change whereas parking enforcement were the only ones trained and therefore were not making the same mistake: > "When the rule changed in 2009 to allow for certain pedestrian ramps to be blocked by parked v…

Post by tibbon » Thu, May 12, 2016, 6:41 PM UTC

dexterdog wrote: post #167

tibbon wrote: post #159

Dozens of motorcyclists in downtown Boston recently had a problem like this. There are 12-hour motorcycle meters (25 cents an hour, woo!), but a parking cop kept issuing tickets for "Over 2 hour parking" at those meters. They assumed they were like the car meters. I challenged my stack of them, and they relented, but refused to actually write me back with how/why this was happening, and how they were upgrading their…

Refunding can be very hard if you have to write the check that you are hoping you won't have to write.

Post by raould42 » Thu, May 12, 2016, 7:00 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #3

For people who skip straight to the comments: I couldn't fit it into the title, but the other half of the OP's title is that the author confronted the NYPD with his data analysis and they thanked him and spoke positively about the effect of open data: > “Mr. Wellington’s analysis identified errors the department made in issuing parking summonses. It appears to be a misunderstanding by officers on patrol of a recent,…

Post by tzs » Thu, May 12, 2016, 8:07 PM UTC

djrogers wrote: post #168

wccrawford wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not surprised that people are having a hard time with it. What does it really say? After reading it 3 or 4 times, I was sure you made a typo. Then I realized you probably copy and pasted it, so it's not a typo. In the end, I finally concluded that it is legal to park across a disabled access spot in the curb unless it's in a crosswalk or otherwise prohibited. Which is contrary to common sense, IMO... But then, th…

> Which is contrary to common sense, IMO Its not contrary to common sense - ramps are needed at crosswalks so people can cross the street. A ramp in the middle of the street, with no crosswalk around, is not needed.