Parking Ticket Blues

[rokuq]

I was recently downtown and parked on a side street paying the $4.00 for the maximum 2hour limit at the green machine.
I come back to my car just 8 minutes past the expiry time and there's a bright yellow ticket for $30 waiting on my windshield.

Is there any way I can contest this in court and win or am I pretty much SOL? I'm willing to pay the extra toonie it would have cost for the extra time needed!

What are the repercussions if I choose to just ignore the ticket altogether?

 

[Hockey_MLnut]

Usually they give a grace peroid of 10 min cause every body's watch is different.

But then they (the court) would say you should have looked at the parking voucher and then adjusted your watch accordingly.

 

[hungry]

I was recently downtown and parked on a side street paying the $4.00 for the maximum 2hour limit at the green machine.
I come back to my car just 8 minutes past the expiry time and there's a bright yellow ticket for $30 waiting on my windshield.

Is there any way I can contest this in court and win or am I pretty much SOL? I'm willing to pay the extra toonie it would have cost for the extra time needed!

What are the repercussions if I choose to just ignore the ticket altogether?

I had a thread a few weeks ago re parking ticket woe. I didn't get much sympathy here and paid the 60 bucks. I was at the place for less than 5 minutes.

 

[Fabulous]

Usually they give a grace peroid of 10 min cause every body's watch is different.

That's not true, if the ticket is expired they can ticket you 1 minute after.

Whenever I get a parking ticket and I feel I am not guilty or I just don't want to pay it, I plead 'NOT GUILTY'. It takes 8 months to a year to receive a court date. Every time, if it ever reached the court date the ticket police never showed up, so it was automatically dropped out. I also noticed some of the parking tickets I plead not guilty to, never even got a court date and did not end up on the sticker renewal.

That's what will happen if you just ignore the ticket and by the time it gets on your licence, it'll be double the amount, and they'll get you next time you go for your sticker.

So you either pay it or plead to it.

 

[tboy]

I was recently downtown and parked on a side street paying the $4.00 for the maximum 2hour limit at the green machine.
I come back to my car just 8 minutes past the expiry time and there's a bright yellow ticket for $30 waiting on my windshield.

Is there any way I can contest this in court and win or am I pretty much SOL? I'm willing to pay the extra toonie it would have cost for the extra time needed!

What are the repercussions if I choose to just ignore the ticket altogether?

Dude, the city has more meter maids than police....when they look at the time of your ticket they mark it down and come back and check to see if you've bought another.....It is hard to prove now but back when there were meters, a law was passed that said they couldn't hover over the meter until it expired.

For eg: where I'm working these days non-permit vehicles aren't allowed to park until 10 am. Every day at 3 minutes to,the meter maid is cruising the street looking for non-permit vehicles....Since they work the same area all the time, they learn which vehicles can be there and what can't.

I think it's wrong, but hey, it's just another cash grab for the city. In fact, with the current budget woes, I wouldn't be surprised to see a hiring blitz for meter maids and to see them hire one per every city block...Just think about the numbers: they would only have to give out 3 tickets a day to break even. ONLY three......and I bet meter maids hand out hundreds a day.

I can also see the value of tickets to go up too.

 

[Hard Idle]

You're lucky you even got the full 2 hours. They set up all sorts of dirty tricks so they can issue more $30 fines instead of collecting a few bucks in parking rates.

The machines are rigged to reject about one half of all small coins ( dimes & quarters) to prevent you from purchasing time in small increments. But when you want a full 2 hours and you only have one or two loonies and the rest in dimes & quarters, it won't take some of the small coins so you CAN'T even pay for all the time you wanted to buy.

In May one machine at the side street behind the Reference Library had a metal flap over the "coin return" slot fused shut so you couln't retrieve your returned coins unless you had a slim poket knife to fish them out through the 5mm slit.

When machines are out of order or won't print and you call the number posted on the decal, they refuse to send an agent to collect your payment or do anything about the machine, instead they just tell you to find another spot.

Fortunately most of the time I can get all my errands & Shopping done in the suburbs where they have customer parking so I have no need to be downtown except to go to SCs after midnight when parking isn't collected.

 

[tboy]

Just thinking about the current budget woes of the city again and I scoff whenever I hear the incumbent asshats say "our only source of revenue is the property tax system" which is utter bullshit. I bet they rake in millions of dollars a month from parking tickets....in fact, I might even go looking for some data on it.

 

[antaeus]

... I also noticed some of the parking tickets I plead not guilty to, never even got a court date and did not end up on the sticker renewal....

I contest every parking ticket as a moral objection to the City's ignorant usurious policy. In past 3 years every contested ticket has dropped from existence. Filed at old city hall - traffic court they were processed and I paid at licence renewal. Filed at Keele Eglinton with standard response Yes! to "do you contest the evidence" resulted in every ticket disappearing.

I repeat:

Boss Hogg, Toronto mayor, has instructed Roscoe P. Coltrane, chief of police, to deploy the movable fire hydrants! (for you youngsters, Dukes of Hazzard)

 

[rokuq]

Thanks to all for the very helpful input.

I examined my parking ticket more carefully and noticed the meter maid only filled in the End Time for the Time of Infraction area but not the Start Time. Is this common practice? If it was an error on his part, do you think this is enough to win in court?

 

[Mao Tse Tongue]

One more way that Toronto is a less interesting and liveable city with each passing day.

I don't know about you, but it's tough to plan an appointment to be exactly two fucking hours, and not a minute more. You paid your $4 for two hours, and then four seconds after expiry, the idiot who's been circling the same block fifteen times an hour has his PDA alarm go off, and you're fucked.

I've taken to calling the asswipes every name in the book to get back my pound of flesh.

The city will never change the system or the approach, because they need all the zillions of dollars it provides ($100M a year, according to the Star).

 

[Esco!]

I just got one today also, lousy scumsucking bloodsuckers!!!!

I was gone for maybe 3 minutes

 

[Hockey_MLnut]

That's not true, if the ticket is expired they can ticket you 1 minute after.

That's why the 2nd line of my comment was " But then they would say you should of looked at the time on your parking voucher and adjusted your watch accordingly."

 

[MmmMilena]

I have a few parking tickets that I have still not paid. When I went to renew my sticker in July, nothing happened. I was not asked to pay the amount of the tickets, just got my sticker. THey will catch up to me, I know..

GRrrrr... I just absolutely despise the parking enforcement and parking tickets!! ughhhhhhh!

 

[MmmMilena]

LOL... when I read this thread the Malibu Rum commercial comes to mind. The one where it is a boat "parking lot" and everyone is fighting for a spot. Tehn one of the boaters gets a ticket handed to him and says "Is ya mother proud uh ya!!" That makes me laugh everytime!! LOL

 

[tboy]

LOL... when I read this thread the Malibu Rum commercial comes to mind. The one where it is a boat "parking lot" and everyone is fighting for a spot. Tehn one of the boaters gets a ticket handed to him and says "Is ya mother proud uh ya!!" That makes me laugh everytime!! LOL

I like the one where the bus stops and there's a guy on a bicycle behind saying "eets total greedlock..." lol that cracks me up.

As for the "1 hr limit" the metermaids typically chalk a vehicle's tires then come back an hour later to see if the vehicle is moved. The way to get around this is every hour, go out and rub off the chalk lol. But in the case above, the metermaid probably just wrote down the wrong time but I bet dollars to donuts they were standing there waiting for the hour to be up.

 

[seth gecko]

Why not try Parkingticketblues.com ???

 

[rokuq]

So I went to the ticketing center (of course they make you pay to park there, another moneygrab!!! when will the madness end?) and instructed the booth attendant that I wanted option 3. Filled out my paper work and she informed me it might take 10 months for me to get the trial date. I'm hoping that being civil to the attendant will put me in a "good"(lost) pile where the infraction just disappears. I noticed at the booth next to me another person who also wished to contest it in court was ranting and raving at the attendant like she was already in court lol.

If the meter maid does show up, what is a failsafe argument? If I were to say it wasn't a full 2hrs, would I have to provide the stub of the ticket from the green machine because I think I tossed it away already.

In any event, just the mere presence of Milena in the thread makes me feel much better!

 

[RTRD]

My experience...

.

If the meter maid does show up, what is a failsafe argument? If I were to say it wasn't a full 2hrs, would I have to provide the stub of the ticket from the green machine because I think I tossed it away already.

...is that they won't write the ticket if you are actually back to your car before they finish...but maybe that is just me.

On the other hand, I have stopped a guy for writing me a ticket (back before they were computer generated) prior to the time actually expiring. he just ASSUMED I wouldn't make it back.

Another guy DID write the ticket...I get to the car...check the time on the ticket...check my watch...think "WTF"...then chased his ass down. I had AT LEAST 5 more minutes to go I pointed out...he just sort of smiled at me, took the ticket back and said to not worry about it. What a prick.

Of course, there are the good guys who on several occasions have told me to not bother paying the tickets given to my car with the U.S. plates...makes me think they are on quota if they write the ticket in the first place...but now I know to just ball it up and toss it...

 

[thewheelman]

Just thinking about the current budget woes of the city again and I scoff whenever I hear the incumbent asshats say "our only source of revenue is the property tax system" which is utter bullshit. I bet they rake in millions of dollars a month from parking tickets....in fact, I might even go looking for some data on it.

BINGO !!!

What people do not realize is that you are no longer paying a parking meter to lease a parking spot for a period of designated time.

With the new system, we are paying a Parking Tax. You can no longer buy 5 minutes of time just to run in and out, but have to pay a minimum 75c. You leave after 5 min, but the next person has to pay the minimum as well, for a spot that is already been paid for the time period....perhaps 3 or 4 times.

That is a huge amount of revenue over the previous system.

And THAT is a TAX !! on parking...anyway you look at it.

And then if you are late, you earn a fine that is 40X the fee. I like to see any business try to get away with that....only governments can.

 

[genx25]

makes me think they are on quota if they write the ticket in the first place...but now I know to just ball it up and toss it...

The parking enforcement guys are absolutely on a quota. They are supposed to hit a certain number for every 5 week cycle which can get pretty difficult for them considering:

1) most of them are on shift work and it can be pretty hard to write tickets at 4am so they have to write even more during their daytime shifts to make that up
2) the city keeps hiring more and more enforcement officers who get shoehorned into the same overstaffed areas

So, in order to try and meet the quota they have to start being more aggressive in who and where they ticket. Plus, they know that if you just fight the ticket you'll probably get off, so they get one more ticket and you (eventually) get off.

Yes, there are a good number of them who are dicks. But many of them are just doing their job and trying to meet the quota.