Pittsburgh City Council looks to ticket cars through the mail for better enforcement

PITTSBURGH — On the streets of South Side, you’ll see resident permit parking signs, but a number of people are filling up those spaces without paying.

“As soon as you move it, someone is in it instantly unless you are throwing a chair in front of your house,” resident Eric Montgomery said.

Post-pandemic, the number of people writing the tickets for the Pittsburgh Parking Authority has dwindled. Plus add in the need for a police escort for those parking attendants due to the violence and people don’t have a reason to move their cars.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen enforcement numbers go down because of that. One of the solutions we came up with in 2021 is to do ticket by mail,” said Councilperson Bob Charland.

Those changes were never implemented until now.

City Council is now reviewing a bill to allow parking attendants to file parking tickets without ever getting out of their car. The registered owner of the vehicle will just receive the ticket in the mail, but not everyone is on board.

“Me personally I work 12 hours overnight, I get home and don’t check the mail, don’t hear the mailman at the door. By the time I get around to the ticket, it will be too late with added-on extra fees,” Montgomery said.

The city believes it will work after running a three-work pilot program last fall with cameras in two Southside parking lots. There was a 30-minute grace period until it sent a warning followed by real tickets. The data shows that 50% of the people parking weren’t paying.

That money pays the Clean Team for this neighborhood.

“Just January there was 12,000 pounds of trash that was picked up by the clean team. This is paid for by the parking enhancement district which obviously works better if we have better enhancement,” Charland said.

The bill will be discussed at next week’s committee meeting with the hope of passing it soon.

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