The Cost of Parking

Parking tickets help regulate access to curbside spaces and streamline city services like plowing and street cleaning. But prior research and news investigations have shown that, much like other fines and fees, they can disproportionately burden people of color and those with low incomes. We conducted a preliminary analysis of parking tickets data in Austin, Texas; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Portland, Oregon. We looked at tickets issued between 2018 and 2019, focusing on where tickets are issued, the number and dollar amount of tickets, and the types of violation for which tickets are assessed. We find that in Minneapolis, over one parking ticket was issued per city resident, with revenue raised from parking tickets amounting to nearly $90 per resident. Across the three cities, we find most tickets were issued in downtown areas for meter-related violations. In Austin, nearly one-quarter of all parking tickets issued between 2018 and 2019 were unpaid as of September 2022. Better data and more research are needed to assess patterns in who receives parking tickets and to ensure equitable parking enforcement and revenue collections.