Last week’s blizzard earned Washington, D.C. $1,369,750 in parking ticket fines, reports nbcwashington.com. Residents who parked in emergency snow routes were ticketed, towed and/or impounded. Tickets handed out on Friday, January 22 were later rescinded because city leaders were concerned some people might not have understood the rules or were too occupied in preparations for the storm to move their cars. That move brought the total down to around $600,000.
“Don’t park your car illegally, and that includes parking it kind of in the middle of the street next to the snow bank,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Tuesday. Cars should be parked no more than 12 inches from a curb, not a snow bank, or drivers risk a ticket, she said.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and it seems to me that Washington, D.C. is justified in enforcing strict parking requirements during one of its worst storms ever. That doesn’t change the fact that residents experiencing severe weather are going to expect leniency – not tickets. It’s an interesting conundrum.
Having seen what delayed snow removal does to the roads, I say hand out those tickets to anyone and everyone. They won’t like the fines, but they won’t like impassable roads either.
Read the article here.
