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Single Fire Hydrant Nets NYC $33,000 a Year
- pm2222 3y ago"Annualized", got it. Thought it has to be two hundred a ticket at the minimum to net that much of revenue a year.
- epc 3y agoIt’s $115/ticket according to https://www.nyc.gov/site/finance/vehicles/services-violation-codes.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/finance/vehicles/services-violation... (look up code 40).
- sgt 3y agoAnd are these tickets issued or tickets actually paid? I can imagine a lot of people just toss the ticket and hope for the best.
- eduction 3y agoIf you fail to pay the ticket they can -block you from renewing vehicle registration (if registered in NY, not sure about other states) -incapacitate your vehicle with a boot -tow your vehicle The only time you could maybe get away with tossing the ticket is if you visit NY from another state in a non rental vehicle and do not plan to return. This is going to be a low percentage of vehicles.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- expertentipp 3y agoDummies. In my country there is magic spell: "it's only for three minutes", in Italy they use "park anywhere" magic button (emergency lights). Don't believe there is nothing like this in US.
- toast0 3y agoThe US has "I'm totally not here" lights, but I'm guessing the NYPD is hardened against them.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoI think a lot of the people getting these tickets would happily pay them in order to get the better spot. Plus there's all that stuff about diplomats just parking wherever they want because they don't have to pay tickets but that might've been fixed.
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agojust because they can't arrest you doesn't mean they can't tow the car (not legal advice, not sure if this is an act of war or not)
- bee_rider 3y agoNYPD has a lot of officers, I bet they could take a couple countries.
- Konnstann 3y agoIn my experience in college where some diplomat's kid would illegally park his car almost every day, they will tow the car but the embassy will go pick it up and pay the fine so it didn't really matter to them.
- wlesieutre 3y agoJust hope you don’t end up like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk6xz4EmXBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk6xz4EmXBk
- bee_rider 3y agoPremium parking.
- bityard 3y agoI have a friend who travels to the local downtown area (not New York) semi-frequently. He did the math and it turned out to be cheaper to accept and pay the occasional parking ticket than to pay the parking meter every time. So he just doesn't feed the meter. Apparently he only gets a ticket once every few years on average. I couldn't do it because getting slapped with a fine would cause an anxiety flare-up even when I knew the consequences beforehand. (And also I have worse luck than other people and can prove it with math!)
- xtqctz 3y agoGreat work! Should recoup about 0.000001% of the negative externalities cars produce in NYC.
- pcurve 3y agoThe data is from 2013-2014. "The annualized total of all Fire Hydrant parking fines? $55 million." Not sure how much of $11B NYPD budget is allocated for parking fine enforcement, but I suppose $55 million will more than cover it.
- robswc 3y ago>but I suppose $55 million will more than cover it At this point, I don't know if that's such a safe bet when you find governments managing to spend millions on a single toilet, lol. I agree though, they're probably making revenue. If its 300 ppl and they're on average making $75k (made up figures) that's roughly 22 million right there. I wonder how much _all_ parking fines bring in. If fire hydrants alone are $50 that number has to be massive, right?
- bombcar 3y agoAnd do they collect cash from all fines or are they just issued and only some collected?
- chimeracoder 3y ago> Not sure how much of $11B NYPD budget is allocated for parking fine enforcement, The NYPD notoriously not only refuses to enforce most parking violations, but is actually the largest source of illegal parking violations themselves. There's even an official card for it[0]. This has been a known and documented problem for years, but the NYPD has successfully resisted any attempt at oversight. It's one of the reasons that the new law against idling allows citizens to report it themselves without requiring a cop to issue a ticket. [0] https://apnews.com/article/nypd-courtesy-card-police-misconduct-c6b6cba435f4ad025944cd4e85f7189c https://apnews.com/article/nypd-courtesy-card-police-miscond...
- readams 3y agoThis is the fire hydrant in question: https://goo.gl/maps/5C983vRcHCW6Zaq5A https://goo.gl/maps/5C983vRcHCW6Zaq5A Currently there's construction there so probably the fines are reduced.
- stefan_ 3y agoNo wonder people have to park in front of the hydrant there, there is absolutely no parking on that street
- readams 3y agoDoesn't appear to be any particularly obvious reason this would be a big problem. Edit: Actually looks like they repainted the lines there in between Aug 2013 and Oct 2014 which makes it much more clear. Here's 2013: https://goo.gl/maps/NF3xguY2P6FX4JUX7 https://goo.gl/maps/NF3xguY2P6FX4JUX7 And 2014: https://goo.gl/maps/Bk6W8bqndCb1Zjvd7 https://goo.gl/maps/Bk6W8bqndCb1Zjvd7
- jerrygenser 3y agoI love how there's a car there in the 2013 shot that likely received a fine.
- londons_explore 3y agoThe goal of the law is to let someone connect a hose to the fire hydrant right? Well even with a car parked in that spot, there is still multiple yards of spare space to connect a hose... The whole thing smells of someone sticking to the letter not the spirit of the law.
- drewbitt 3y agoIf you look at 2013 Google Maps, it’s no wonder 152 Forsyth was first place. There’s drawn lines for parking and the fire hydrant is several feet away and inconspicuously painted black. I think I would’ve parked there too thinking I was far enough away from the hydrant. By 2014 they fixed this by painting it as no parking. Got plenty of income though leaving it like that for years.
- op00to 3y agoThe black paint is just what fire hydrants in that part of the city look like. There are very few yellow/red fire hydrants in Manhattan.
- xyst 3y agoCar centric American problems
- mabbo 3y agoThe goal of fines is meant to be to discourage specific problematic behaviours, like parking where it would cause problems for the fire department. When the goal becomes to cause the behaviour more often so that your can collect more fines, the entire system is just fundamentally broken. A large portion of the money collected should go to a department whose goal is to find further ways to discourage the problematic behaviour. Paint the curb bright red, for starters.
- bombcar 3y agoThis is why the basic solution of calling the firefighters out to break the windows of the vehicle and run a hose through it is more an actual solution. Apparently it worked to get the Soviet diplomats to stop parking in front of hydrants.
- londons_explore 3y agoI've got a feeling that there are so many false fire alarms that fire crews probably don't bother getting out the hoses until they see smoke at least. Remember the truck has a couple of minutes supply of water onboard, so hooking up to a hydrant immediately isn't the top priority anyways.
- dylan604 3y agoYou don't need to get out the hoses to break the windows. You just need to have the FD drive by and break the windows, then receive an unexpected higher priority call so they just jump back on the truck and drive away to that next call. Hell, you don't even need to send a truck. Allow the citizens to take civic pride in their city and institute a "no charges will be brought" type of situations for breaking windows of cars illegally parked in front of hydrants.
- jstarfish 3y ago> Allow the citizens to take civic pride in their city and institute a "no charges will be brought" type of situations for breaking windows of cars illegally parked in front of hydrants. Fun. Then we get kids putting a cardboard box over the hydrant and playing "what box?" after smashing your windows. Varies by municipality: when parking anywhere, look for blue reflectors in the middle of the road. There's usually one or two per street. They denote where the fire hydrants are so the FD can easily find them when cars block curbside visibility. You can use the same feature to avoid hidden hydrants yourself.
- blamazon 3y agoCan we get a (2014) in the title?
- laser 3y agoAmusing coincidence the second one (~$25k /yr) on the list has a violator in the google street view: https://goo.gl/maps/p26casEqnKVCw2BK8 https://goo.gl/maps/p26casEqnKVCw2BK8 image: https://capture.dropbox.com/UyeMpFCv6xuitWlB https://capture.dropbox.com/UyeMpFCv6xuitWlB
- starik36 3y agoThis is pretty deceptive. The curb is painted white and the hydrant is not even near the street and it's not painted in a red color. I can see being in a hurry and not realizing that you can't park here. Definitely scammy.
- crazygringo 3y ago#3 place, 44 Court St., is directly opposite Brooklyn Borough Hall and the Kings County Supreme Court. A friend of mine who had been a reporter for the NYT told me it was official policy that all reporters' parking fines would be paid by the newspaper if there wasn't a free space anywhere otherwise -- to never miss a story because of parking. So that doesn't surprise me at all. EDIT: see my response below, I forgot it was a general rule but I think fire hydrants were an exception because of safety. So probably not applying here at all, sorry
- blamazon 3y agoThat's a cool story and connection to the article, thanks for sharing! Similarly, I know several plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs etc. who consider what I see as eye watering stacks of parking tickets to be just an ordinary cost of doing business in NYC.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoThis is the basic problem with the "cars are bad, make things bad for cars" urban designs. Sometimes you need a car, because you've got a carload of heavy equipment you need to bring to a job in the city and you can't carry it on the subway. But then there's nowhere to legally park at the job site, and you still have a carload of heavy equipment and you can't carry it all several blocks to the nearest available parking structure. Parking fines become a cost of doing business because there are no practical alternatives.
- blamazon 3y agoIronically I believe you may be missing the true point you're making - the reason why there's no parking for commercial vehicles who need to be in that area, is that the streets are absolutely just chock full of various individuals' private property - street parked cars. If you got rid of those street parking spots for individuals, (IE, 'cars are bad make things harder for cars') there would be plenty of space for commercial vehicles to do their jobs, and the problem we're discussing would be solved. A great solution to this sort of thing is common in the rest of the world, pedestrian-first streets that are permeable to vehicular traffic, offer unstructured temporary parking for necessary uses but does not offer structured overnight street parking for individuals and have a ~15mph limit. Perfect for getting the plumber's van to the front door of properties on such a street. Here's a random example in Innsbruck, Austria, note how much room there is to park contractor vans in front of the various adjacent buildings: https://maps.app.goo.gl/m2e7AmWFr8hqw9BC9?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/m2e7AmWFr8hqw9BC9?g_st=ic Now, that street is at the maximalist end of this idea, on most NYC streets you could delete maybe 25% of the street parking for individuals and there'd be plenty of room for plumbers. Also for garbage collection units (to address the rat problem), bicycle parking, al fresco dining, etc. The urbanist philosophy you are denigrating isn't that cars are 'bad.' The idea is that they're fine in many contexts, they're just wildly inefficient when being used by too many individual persons in a dense urban environment, such as most of NYC. I would also add along these lines - the changes you perceive as purely punitive to drivers probably make life better for everyone in the city, with a cost to only (some) drivers. Something to think about.
- sh34r 3y agoIn many East Coast cities, the expected cost of a parking ticket is much lower than the guaranteed cost of garage parking. Fines have not kept pace with inflation at all. In NYC, parking tickets cost $45-125. Fire hydrant violations are at the upper end of that range. But when garage parking is $10-20 an hour, rolling the dice on the fine is the economically rational behavior. Yes, this is sociopathic when you apply it to fire hydrants, but NYC drivers are sociopaths. They ought to add a zero to all those fines and start heavily using the carrot to discourage driving. But the thing is, the city quite likes the status quo. If those fines were more of a deterrent, the city would get less revenue. The fines need to be low enough not to actually discourage the antisocial behavior. Isn’t neoliberalism awesome?
- cycomanic 3y agoThe reality is that that amount of money probably barely covers the return on the value of such a piece of prime real estate in Manhattan. The solution is easy, get rid of on street parking, use the space for pedestrians, bikes and shops, cafes and restaurants. Why should the public pay for people's ability to put their space wasters somewhere and they even complain about getting fines for obstructing emergency services. Before someone chimes in with "but you need a car to get around...", we are talking about Manhattan here not somewhere in the Apalachians.
- jimt1234 3y agoI'm reminded that my city used to have red-light cameras on major intersections. Each year the local newspaper would publish a list of intersections with the most red-light violations, and each year the list was almost identical to the previous year. The newspaper article was always presented as support for the red-light cameras ("Look at all these bad drivers we're catching!"), but in my mind, it was just the opposite. First, if people keep running the same red-lights in the same intersections at the same rate, then red-light cameras as a deterrent isn't working. Second, and most important, why not just fix the god damn intersections so people don't feel the need to run the red-lights? ... But then I remembered this scene from "The Jerk", an old Steve Martin movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meBXuuy9xto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meBXuuy9xto
- snapplebobapple 3y agoThis is basically why we need a separation of ability to fine and fine income, otherwise the abuse will always trend towards very high.