Parking Ticket Blitz

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Aug 12, 2010 4:00PM

Almost two months back, we mentioned how the company that is leasing the parking meters from the city of Chicago was getting ready to dive back in to the ticket writing game after a hiatus due to all kinds of issues. But now they're back and in the first three weeks of their new round of ticket writing, they showed they mean serious business. According to the Sun-Times, Chicago Parking Meters LLC wrote 1,345 tickets between June 21 and July 14. Even scarier? All those tickets were written by five workers, about a third of the total workforce the company will have trotted out by year's end. Besides boosting the city's revenue in tickets, though, there's another motivation for CPM to write as many tickets as they possibly can.

Although ticket revenues continue to flow into the city's coffers, Chicago Parking Meters LLC is hoping that more tickets translate to increased compliance, now hovering around 75 percent. That could boost the company's bottom line by 10 percent in 2011, consultants say.

That bottom line is already growing and by the time the 75-year lease is up the "bottom line" could top $11 billion, or 10 times what it shelled out to the city for the deal. You know, that big wad of $1.15 billion that's already almost gone after less than two years. And don't forget that come January 1, 2011 (and 2012 and 2013), the parking rates will increase once more. Thanks, Mayor Daley!