Income-based parking fines (Boston: live, garages, housing)

[BostonBornMassMade]

Originally Posted by redplum33

How did you renew your driver's license with an unpaid parking ticket?

Nothing at all happened. It had zero effect on me getting a 21 year old horizontal license. *shrug*

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by jayrandom

Move out of state.

What? Parking tickets are tied to vehicles, not to licenses. Why would this affect a license?!?!?

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by Robert5

This is so dystopian. Firstly and most importantly it is unjust to base a penalty on your ability to pay for it. The same logic would result in vastly different jail times for criminal offenses based upon the Defendant's age (younger criminals being given far more time because they can afford it more than older criminals).



From a practical standpoint it has two huge flaws. A. are you really going to means test everyone that gets a parking ticket? ('just take people's word for it', that will work well) B. The primary purpose of Parking fines are to influence behavior, the immediate consequence of poor people paying a reduced fine will be that "poor" people will abuse the system and monopolize valuable parking spots, the long term consequence of poor people paying a reduced fine will be that you will have created more poor people via a perverse incentive to become/remain poor.


A proposal only a Socialist could love.

Well, we DO see reduced jail time for people that earn more or have more wealth.

And yes, the fines are to influence behavior, its not doing it to those who earn a ton.

You're really making a good case FOR this proposal especially when we are talking about public (socialist) roads.

I still don't think its practical, but I might be convinced with your solid arguments.

[redplum33]

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

Nothing at all happened. It had zero effect on me getting a 21 year old horizontal license. *shrug*

Hmm. The MA RMV site says:




"You can’t renew your driver’s license if:

• Your driver’s license is suspended or revoked
• You have unpaid parking tickets, excise tax, or EZ-Pass violations"

and


"Unpaid fines or taxes


You can check the status of your driver’s license to find out if you have unpaid fines or excise taxes that will prevent you from renewing your driver's license. You will need to pay any outstanding obligations before renewing your license.

• Parking tickets or excise taxes — Pay the tickets or taxes, and get a receipt from the city or town showing that items have been paid.
• EZ-Pass MA — Call customer service at (877) 627-7745 to pay your violations."

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by timberline742

Well, we DO see reduced jail time for people that earn more or have more wealth.

And yes, the fines are to influence behavior, its not doing it to those who earn a ton.

You're really making a good case FOR this proposal especially when we are talking about public (socialist) roads.

I still don't think its practical, but I might be convinced with your solid arguments.

Completely impractical. The City of Boston shouldn’t have any way of figuring out how much someone who parks there makes. I mean the IRS is pretty tight-lipped about how much the President made all these years. I’d frankly be worried if they figured out how to get that information, especially for people that don’t live in the city.

And I doubt there’s much to this in terms of influencing behavior. I don’t have stats, but my limited experience seems to be the exact opposite of this idea that rich people just eat parking tickets because it doesn’t make much difference to them. People that rich are parking in a garage. Most of the people I know who get parking tickets get them out of what can charitably be called ignorance but is more likely purposeful obfuscation.

What would make WAY more sense to me is a way of forgiving or reducing fines for those that can demonstrate a hardship.

[BostonBornMassMade]

Originally Posted by redplum33

Hmm. The MA RMV site says:




"You can’t renew your driver’s license if:

• Your driver’s license is suspended or revoked
• You have unpaid parking tickets, excise tax, or EZ-Pass violations"

and


"Unpaid fines or taxes


You can check the status of your driver’s license to find out if you have unpaid fines or excise taxes that will prevent you from renewing your driver's license. You will need to pay any outstanding obligations before renewing your license.

• Parking tickets or excise taxes — Pay the tickets or taxes, and get a receipt from the city or town showing that items have been paid.
• EZ-Pass MA — Call customer service at (877) 627-7745 to pay your violations."

Yea well this was before word got around that the RMV had like 40k+ unenforceable violations when that trucker killed someone In NH. I was never held up a moment. Even got a duplicate after that.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by jayrandom

Completely impractical. The City of Boston shouldn’t have any way of figuring out how much someone who parks there makes. I mean the IRS is pretty tight-lipped about how much the President made all these years. I’d frankly be worried if they figured out how to get that information, especially for people that don’t live in the city.

And I doubt there’s much to this in terms of influencing behavior. I don’t have stats, but my limited experience seems to be the exact opposite of this idea that rich people just eat parking tickets because it doesn’t make much difference to them. People that rich are parking in a garage. Most of the people I know who get parking tickets get them out of what can charitably be called ignorance but is more likely purposeful obfuscation.

What would make WAY more sense to me is a way of forgiving or reducing fines for those that can demonstrate a hardship.

Yeah, I can see that too. Or how about, higher tickets for commercial vehicles. Lots of construction and delivery vehicles just see them as a cost of doing business.

[jayrandom]

Originally Posted by timberline742

Yeah, I can see that too. Or how about, higher tickets for commercial vehicles. Lots of construction and delivery vehicles just see them as a cost of doing business.

I think that coupled with a more workable policy for construction and delivery vehicles would make more sense. They do see it as a cost of doing business, which means that it's likely the cheapest alternative. I think you can make it expensive enough so they stop, but if there isn't some sort of replacement the effect is that people in Boston stop being able to build anything or get packages.

[timberline742]

Originally Posted by jayrandom

I think that coupled with a more workable policy for construction and delivery vehicles would make more sense. They do see it as a cost of doing business, which means that it's likely the cheapest alternative. I think you can make it expensive enough so they stop, but if there isn't some sort of replacement the effect is that people in Boston stop being able to build anything or get packages.

Yeah, can't argue with that.

[Mr. Joshua]

Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

Basically, why would a guy making 500k pay the same ticket as a guy making 40k? It doesn’t discourage 500k guy he just pays it and doesn’t blink. 40k guy drives illegally because maybe he can’t pay it before accumulating late feeds now we have a flag in his license or a warrant and even more court costs/ illegal driver.

If the impact is deterrent ...then the deterrent should be equal amongst all income levels. This isn’t a new or revolutionary practice.

At a certain point they will boot 500k guy's car.

The reason for parking tickets is to discourage bad parking. The only thing I would be for is making easier to dispute the ticket without having to take a day off from work. If someone is low income they can submit a paycheck and let the chips fall where they may. I'm sure the parking clerk can be instructed to take this into account.