Kay Wood
Conceptual artist/writer Mike Silverstein and I are taking on the parking ticket predators and their faux curb taxes in our new website parkinghorrors.com. I think you'll find it's a lot of fun.
The Worldwide Parking Ticket Blight
Philadelphia — Pretty much everyone who reads a newspaper in this country knows that local governments have transformed needed parking regulations into cash cows for their own recession-depleted general funds. Most Americans however, don't know that this same predatory process — often in an even more pronounced form — is at work in countries around the world.
Britain is a prime example. After the government in 1991 allowed local councils to administer ticketing systems, often with the help of private contractors, the number of tickets issued soared 700 percent in the next six years. It has been increasing steadily there ever since. Stories such as parking wardens giving tickets to bus drivers stopped to pick up passengers, and to vans operated by the national blood service, have become a staple of English newspapers.
Madcap tales in this realm are turning up everywhere. In Tel Aviv, for example, if you haven't paid your ticket fines, you get a visit at your home in the evening from collectors. In Darwin, Australia, an elderly woman tied her dog to a fence by a parking bay while she shopped, and when she returned found a parking ticket tucked under its collar.
Parkinghorrors.com tracks this worldwide parking enforcement madness on a daily basis, with a special focus on the way it is playing out in this country. In addition, it runs regular features on the effect parking is having on local merchants, individual tales of woe from victimized motorists, and poignant and frequently hilarious cartoons by artist Kay Wood.
For more information, contact Kay Wood or her sidekick, Mike Silverstein, at info@parkinghorrors.com.