How to Fight a Parking Ticket in Philadelphia

Philadelphia is an old city with very little free space available for parking. Most of the spots are equipped with meters for parking and the rest are expensive parking lots. It can cost you as much as $10 or $12 for only a half an hour parking. Finding a decent parking spot has been a daily struggle for most of the residents of the city.

What is the likelihood of getting a parking ticket in Philadelphia? How justified will be the tickets?

It is very likely that you will get a ticket in Philadelphia. If you are a car owner and drive regularly on the streets of Philadelphia, get over it, sooner or later you will get a ticket.

We have been living in Philadelphia since 1995. Out of the total 2 or 3 times that we have gotten parking tickets, one has been especially memorable. That was in 2001 when I suffered a broken toe. I was in so much pain that I could barely walk. One day, during the recovery period, my husband stopped the car in front of the road side PNC Bank that only had ATM machines inside. [ It was one branch that no longer exists on the Campus of University of Pennsylvania ]. I got the money from the machine in only two minutes. The police saw me limping and hopping and still started to issue the ticket. I believe she thought I was faking it.

One of my colleagues parked her car 2 blocks away from the subway station in a residential area which did not have any parking restriction sign. She had been doing the same for years to get to work. All of a sudden, one day she got a ticket. She disputed it without any success. She was told she did not have the permit to park in that neighborhood, but the truth was that it was not even a permit parking zone.

Here, I would also like to mention that another colleague of mine received a ticket for having a "For Sale" sign on her car. She was done with her studies and needed to sell her car. She was issued a ticket for $300. The interesting point was that the other 4/5 cars of her student friends in the same neighborhood that had similar signs on their cars were never penalized.

In all three cases we found the issuance of the tickets debatable.

Can you fight the parking ticket? Where do you have to go to appeal?

Yes, you can fight the ticket, but winning is something else. You can file an appeal. You can call the number provided on the ticket or mail in the appeal and schedule a hearing. On the due date you can go to the city court at 9^th and Filbert Street. Ideally, the judge is supposed to hear your side and resolve the issue.
Will the appeal work?

Most likely not. I am not aware of any specific judge who is known to be lenient and I also don't know of anybody who has ever won. All three of us tried to dispute the tickets with no avail. For example, the ticket that I received for $25 accrued fine and went up to $69. My colleague's fine of $40 for "supposedly" parking in the permit parking area went up to $100+ . Moreover, eventually in both cases those were sent to collections and we found out that we would have been better off paying the fine and not dispute the tickets. The lesson learned was that it was not worth jeopardizing the credit score. The other colleague paid her $300 fine because she knew it would be a battle she would never be able to win.

I don't know about anybody else but in all of our cases the appeals were rejected. I can understand for my case even if I had been temporarily handicapped, my husband did park at the wrong spot. So, we were wrong. I can also justify my friend's $300 ticket. Other people's not getting tickets is not an excuse for violating the law. However, there was no excuse for issuing a ticket to my friend where she had parked her car in an area which had no parking restrictions or permit requirements.

Why is there so high a rate of parking tickets getting issued?

Well, this is not a fact that has been established. No research has been conducted. We also don't have any evidence to prove this. Also, the city has never acknowledged the truth of such accusations. But our guess is that the city tries to generate revenue through the issuance of random parking tickets. We also assume that there is an incentive for the parking police. They either get good evaluation or commission or even promotion based on how much money they can bring in through the parking tickets they issue. The city usually sees an increase in parking tickets in the beginning and ending of each month. I don't know why but that has always been the case.