A Solution to Parking Woes in the City?

If you’ve read even a few of my blog posts, then you know that Chicago parking is a contemptuous issue for me. As if paying for public transportation ($86/month and always rising), and dealing with long commutes if you choose to bypass the public option weren’t enough, the city constantly steals your money through ludicrous parking tickets and towing regulations, in addition to an overabundance of metered parking. We all know what a fiasco the privatization of the city’s parking meters has been: the city took a nice chunk of cash to the bank (where it made a tiny little dent in Chicago’s deficit), and citizens, quite simply, got screwed. Even now, after most of the initial kinks have been remedied, the appearance of meters on streets that once allowed parking (particularly on streets where we reside) continues to add insult to injury.

While parking meters frustrate me, I am not nearly as infuriated with them as I am with the street sweeping procedures (which aren't all posted on the street—you better be familiar with your alderman’s website), where, if you forget to move your car, you’ll be towed away. After navigating to the fourth level of hell, I mean, Wacker, to retrieve your car, you’ll be greeted with a minimum $160 fine when you get there. Then, as you walk over to your car with lighter pockets, another sneaky little invoice, slipped under your windshield wiper, awaits you--50 more bucks that you owe to the city. When I saw mine last summer, I started wondering if maybe removing my windshield wipers would be a good strategy to avoid tickets. Hmmm, maybe not.

So, it should come as no surprise that when a friend of mine brought this to my attention, I nearly wept at the ingenuity of it (okay, now I’m just exaggerating). Now you can hire Stop Parking Tickets to remind you to move your car. Oh, oh, and, here’s the even better part, they also notify you when the city decides to tie one of its infamous temporary “No Parking: Tow Zone” signs to a tree or a pole (yes, non-Chicagoans, the city can decide, on a whim, that your parking space is not going to be a parking space tomorrow)! You have to agree that paying a mere $9.99/year beats the $200+ you pay if you’re towed. According to the Stop Parking Tickets website, the average Chicagoan pays over $100 per year on parking tickets (unsurprising, as that’s only two tickets).

Now, I haven’t tried this, because I’m stubborn and like to believe I’ve got the parking situation under the control with my now-wise eagle eyes, but I’d love to know if it’s as great as it seems. Is this the answer to all of our Chicago parking woes?