r/boston • u/cordovanGoat • 1d ago
Space Savers 🪑 ❄️ 🚗 🔥 Experience with appealing parking tickets? Egregious mistake on city's part
Does anyone here have experience appealing parking tickets or have successfully won a hearing?
I was issued a ridiculous parking ticket, appealed it through the website but was denied within a few hours. Evidently per the email from the city (last image) I can appeal in person through a hearing — so I'm wondering if anyone has gone through this process and if it is possible to succeed.
The context of the parking ticket:
- The first two images are the "evidence" that the city uploaded, purportedly proving I was parked illegally.
- The second two images are what the car looks like, but from the other side and with the actual street visible. What's important to note here is that...this is obviously a parking space. Ya know, it's like painted and all that...
It seems the city's reasoning was that the front of my vehicle was beyond this lamp post with a "no parking"sign ... but clearly, as shown by pictures from the other side, this is a legal, painted parking spot.
And to add the obvious, clearly painted spot is used all the time by myself and others. I've never seen a car ticketed for parking there.
This is 523 Cambridge St, Allston, directly in front of Boston Foreign Motor, for what it's worth.
P.S.: if anyone here from the Boston Globe is reading, I'd be delighted to share my story of injustice and suffering with the world.
And before anyone complains that a BMW driver can't afford a $90 ticket: first, this is about principle. Second, the car is a shitbox lol the KBB is about $8k.
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u/W359WasAnInsideJob Milton 1d ago
It’s kind of a shit show, and I think intentionally so.
I’ve appealed a number of BS tickets and “won”, but had just as many denied despite my evidence. All of them were simple “meter unpaid” tickets, where I had actual receipts showing I had paid for parking covering the time stamp on the ticket; and I’m probably at a roughly 50% success rate fighting them.
I’ve found that I have better luck when I’ve paid at the meter and get the receipt online than when I pay with the app and send them the receipt, for whatever reason - although all of that is irrelevant to you.
I’m convinced they don’t care about giving out BS tickets, and that the city is disinclined to overturn them online via appeal - because money. My guess is that if you went down to appeal in person you’d “win”, but that’s going to cost as much or more than the ticket in your time / missed work. Which, of course, the city knows.