If it feels like you always get a ticket on a certain block, but on another street it seems like nobody ever checks, it turns out it’s not your imagination. An investigation has revealed there are distinct “hot spots” for parking enforcement—and other zones that are more or less ignored.
NBC4 conducted research revealing that of the 361,000 city blocks that make up Los Angeles, more than 25 percent of the tickets occur on just 500 specific blocks.
An interactive map below shows all their findings, but the key streets to avoid are Washington Boulevard in Venice, San Vincente Boulevard in Brentwood and Larchmont Boulevard in Larchmont Village. Those three streets accounted for more than 67,430 parking tickets in the study, which included data from 2012 to 2016. For comparison, another street in the study saw only 37.
Jay Carsman, the man who oversaw LA’s parking ticket program for 23 years before retiring in 2008, told NBC he isn’t too impressed with how his successors are running enforcement these days.
“I think they’ve turned it into a giant money making endeavor,” he said.
And it definitely is making money. Last year, the city brought in over $150 million from parking tickets alone. Not every one of the tickets is issued fairly, which is why citizens have the right to contest a ticket they think is in error, however, in recent years, it’s been hard to be heard at City Hall.
Until now, LA has been handing off the processing of parking tickets to a for-profit private company which has been caught ignoring people disputing tickets. The company in question was Xerox, by the way—meaning LA hired the same corporation who made your office copier that never works to be in charge of compassionately reviewing your claim that the parking officer make a mistake.
That system is changing now thanks to an appeals court ruling issued this week. As LA Weekly reports, private companies can still process the tickets, but the same government body that issues the ticket has to be the one to investigate claims, theoretically avoiding the conflict of interest baked into the previous statement.
Nonetheless, even with a better review process, it might be better just to avoid the situation entirely. Be smart about how you park and try to find alternatives to the super-enforcement street zones when you can.