Based on the popularity of my first article on parking in Los Angeles, I wanted to write a follow up to cover more areas to help educate people on the laws. I hate getting tickets and hope any knowledge I gain can help prevent others from getting cited.
The city wants you to trip up, the system is set up that way. They want to make parking confusing so you get tickets. If they didn’t, each meter would have a little parking sign on it with the rules, in addition to posted signs. They want to make it very hard to dispute tickets and easy to miss deadlines to incur fines. They want to charge you fines, penalties and surcharges, as this is how they make a lot of money. They even want you to get multiple tickets, have your car towed, and then sell it and keep the money. That’s the problem, the city makes more money from dumb poor people than from smart rich people.
On one hand, I hate the parking enforcement department and the curse the evil meter maids who do it’s bidding. On the other hand, without them, the city would be gridlocked chaos as people would park where-ever and when-ever they wanted. And I know the officers are hard working people just doing their jobs.
Here are more key tips to help you avoid parking tickets in Los Angeles:
Loading Zones
These are marked by yellow painted curbs or signs and if you know the rules can be a handy place to park. They are enforced 7 AM – 7 PM, Monday – Saturday, even if the parking meters start later. I just got a ticket for this, the meters on the street all started enforcement at 8:30 AM, so I thought I could park in the loading zone until 8:30 AM as well. Not true, I got a ticket at 7:30 AM, as the loading zone enforcement starts at 7 AM.
Loading Zones are not enforced in Sundays, you can park there any time. Regular cars can park in loading zones during the day for up to ten minutes, while actively loading. Commercial vehicles can park there longer.
Holidays
After President’s Day, I wondered about the parking rules on holidays. I asked a parking sergeant today and found my answer. On any official Los Angeles public holiday, the meters are not enforced. No Parking and other posted restrictions may apply, but its like a Sunday for meters, loading zones, etc.
Smart Meters
In Los Angeles they are replacing the old fashioned coin meters with new smart meters. The meters take credit cards and can even change their pricing based on the level of congestion. One good thing is the meters will not accept payment during restricted parking times. So if you park during a tow-away time period, like rush hour, the meter will alert you. This is extremely helpful, as in the past, you could feed the meter and think you would be fine, and then have your car towed.
No Free Parking
There is a new city ordinance that says you must pay for parking. In effect, this means no one can ever park for free due to a broken meter. Many new meters have a small sticker on them reciting this law, and meter maids have told me they will write tickets to cars at broken meters.
Stealth Tickets
Los Angeles meter maids are sneaky. They can and will write you a ticket and never even put it on your car. The law allows this to prevent drivers from driving away from a ticket. If the officer sees the infraction, they can enter your plate in their little handheld device and then the ticket comes by mail.
I received a ticket like this for stopping in a red zone to drop off a passenger. Never mind the trucks blocking the parking entrance I was waiting to enter. The officer was sneaky and didn’t want to deal with me.
Fight The Power
In my opinion, you should dispute every ticket. Make the city work for your money. The city enforces heavily and doesn’t cut any breaks, so as the public, let’s do the same and dispute every single parking ticket, and make them research and spend time reviewing and responding to the disputes.There is an address on the back of your ticket and you have only 21 days from the ticket date to send a dispute letter. The city is very strict, if they receive your dispute after this date, they will automatically deny it.
On the ticket, they must cite the specific section of code they are citing you for. Look up the law and see if it applies. Think of any other good reason you should not have been cited. Signs must be clearly visible and legible, not bent over or spray painted with graffiti. The worst that will happen is you will have to pay the ticket, there is no penalty, disputing the ticket extends the payment time frame for you.If you feel strongly and are denied the first review, you have a right to a hearing with a hearing officer. You will be asked to pay the fine in advance, you can apply for a low income waiver, then you don’t have to pay anything.
When you fight a ticket and win, this goes against the writing officer as a negative mark on their record, which is another reason to fight every ticket.
