November 8, 2007
Transit on Thursday: Mail It
It’s not like you go to the D.C. DMV to chat up the happy employees as it is.
Now, reports the Examiner, when it comes to getting rid of parking tickets, you might not have the choice.
The DMV is proposing moving all ticket adjudication services to postal mail or the Internet as a means of streamlining the process. The motivation? The number of tickets is expected to skyrocket next year as the city installs and starts using parking violation cameras on street sweepers.
They plan to phase out the in-person system by December of next year.
We should note: unless you look it up online or happen to be psychic, you currently won’t know where to take the ticket for in-person adjudication as it is. As a recent parking ticket this blogger has in her glove box shows –- no address for where to go for that service is printed on the damned things.
Photo by sciascia
Watch it rise.
It’s been a delay-ridden week in the Metro world. Forest Glenn station closed during rush hour yesterday for about 30 minutes, while Pentagon station closed for 45 minutes during rush hour Tuesday thanks to leaves on the tracks catching fire.
And you, oh fair Metro rider, know these are not an anomaly.
Perhaps it’s the fact that Metro delays will never be as annoying as sitting in all that D.C. traffic, but despite it all, according to WTOP, ridership has grown 70,000 in the last five years.
Incidentally, Metro isn’t the only alternate form of transportation up in the area. People also have started using their feet and bicycles more to get to Metro (rather, we conclude, than busing or driving) than they did five years ago, a detail that WTOP left out but Metro’s own release made sure to mention. The number of people walking to Metro stations increased 18 percent while the number of those cycling grew 60 percent.
Yellow Line = Hades
We mentioned it yesterday, and we’re mentioning it again today – don’t take the Yellow Line into Alexandria this weekend.
We’ll let you read this announcement yourself, but take the word of those who have dealt with major Yellow Line weekend track work in the past, and spare yourself the trouble.
Other weekend track work, delays
On Monday – Veterans Day – Metro trains will operate on a “special,” modified Saturday schedule while buses will do their normal, weekday thing. That means trains will open at 5 a.m., close at midnight and run less frequently.
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After the online system did not recognize that I had paid a $100 ticket, I contested this through the mail and received no reply after six months. When I contacted the office, they told me that I would need to resubmit my appeal, but that I should have come in-person. My ticket raised to two hundred dollars because it was over 30 days old and after not receiving another response, I went ahead and paid it. That's the story of my $100 ticket which turned into $300 fiasco. Hope their 'mail-in' service improves if they do plan to convert it to this new process.
Hopefully this means that they'll actually start, you know, reading the mail adjudications instead of rubber stamping them with denials.
Twice I've received tickets that were not even in gray areas, but were obvious errors by the ticketing officer, yet my adjudications were denied via form letter.
In both cases I had to have Jim Graham send emails to the DMV director in order to have the tickets eradicated, which is a waste of my time, city council time, and, presumably, the DMV director's time.
It's a great idea as long as it becomes a real adjudication process.
Yellow line will only be hell if you are going to Huntington or Eisenhower. It should have no effect on King Street or Braddock and it’s a boon for Van Dorn and Franconia/Spring; as they will be able to take the Yellow without transferring along the way.
"parking violation cameras on street sweepers" -- how does that work?
I HATE the DC local government. It is corrupt and incompent. I wait four hours to get my driver's license, but I get ticketed five minutes after my meter runs out. How about putting some of those ticket writers in the DMV office so I can get my license faster?
Parking Adjudication is on corner of North Capitol and M St (NE quadrant side or south west corner) I believe.
anyone know what date they stop ticketing for street cleaning? i know they stop street cleaning once it gets cold. would like to know when i can stop moving my car.
Seems like DC is lamenting its lost red light ticket revenue so much that it now wants an all-but-guaranteed way to make up the difference with this adjudication-by-mail scheme.
I've actually successfully protested several tickets in person, and found the process generally efficient and fair. I doubt the same can be said of the adjudication-by-mail. My experience has always been that the only way to get DC bureaucrats to do anything is to show up at their offices and refuse to leave until they deal with your problem.
Eugene12 -- didn't you have a cashed $100 check you could have used as evidence your ticket was paid? If so, I'd recommend an early-morning trip (b/c lines are shorter) to the parking adjudication office to look into a $200 refund.
Automating the parking violation appeal system is going to make Kafka's The Trial look like Pippi Freaking Longstockings.
The next step is to have some freaking Robocop show up at your door. "Please pay your parking violation! You have 20 seconds to comply! You now have 15 seconds to comply! I am now authorized to use physical force!" Then a hail of gunfire shreds your condo and your parents get a bill for the ammunition used.
What annoys me is those people with MD and VA plates who park illegally in my DC neighborhood, and then when they get ticketed they just throw the ticket on the street (I've found many of those pink papers on the sidewalk, all VA/MD cars). DC government should have some sort of arrangement with MD and VA in order to be able to enforce their own parking tickets- which of course is not going to happen. It's stupidly unfair that people with DC plates/parking stickers have to pay their tickets while the already overcrowded streets in DC become free parking for anyone from out of the district.
Moving from parking tickets to Metro, why oh why can't WMATA recognize that Veterans Day (and Columbus Day and perhaps other such holidays) is NOT a normal weekday nor a normal Saturday but something in between?
So they need service that's in between (and, no, weekday bus service and Saturday rail service doesn't cut it).
Even if overall ridership is comparable to a Saturday, a lot of us still have to work. So there's a need for enhanced rush hour service. Why not add a few more trains for intermediate headways (say, every 8-9 minutes instead of every 6 or 12?) during peak hours?
But, no, that would require Metro to think outside the box. Which they can't seem to do.
No, I paid online. When I sent in my letter, I included a print out of the deduction from my checking account as proof of my payment. Yet, I still heard nothing in response. I ended up just going ahead and paying it as I was moving to a new apartment and needing to update my driver's license.
Advice from Ian Buckwalter is greatly appreciated. Next time, I'll go to my neighborhood rep. if I don't receive a timely response from DC gov't. I didn't realize they can assist in these matters.
DMV is already using a License Plate Recognition System (LPRS)in Boot operations and for ROSA (Registration of Out-of-State Automobiles) compliance.
Not only will street sweepers get cameras and LPRS; so will Parking Control Officers.
Didn't know that? It was in Mayor Fenty's 100-day Plan and in a pdf on the DC Government Web site. Somewhere.