Parking Violations Bring in Big Bucks for the City of Seattle

Seattle is big on parking tickets, and city officials plan on getting better. Last year, the city wrote 508,675 tickets – or around one per minute. Those tickets brought in $18.4 million last year which doubled the operating budget for the parking enforcement department. Believe it or not, the city plans on bringing those numbers up, in what they describe as a plan to “shift the paradigm” in the city from driving to utilizing public transportation. “The paradigm has to shift at some point. People will change their patterns as it becomes more difficult to drive and park. Then there’s a tipping point as transportation becomes easier to access, a spokesman for the Department of Planning and Development said. And to force that hand of that paradigm shift, the city is planning on adding even more parking enforcement officers – on top of the 20 who were added since 2008.