The army of the Philadelphia Parking Authority has long been known for a voracious appetite to lift windshield wipers and place tickets on vehicle front windows.
Tickets issued by the PPA have been rising steadily for the last four years, according to an NBC10 analysis of 5.7 million tickets given out since Jan. 2016 and through August of 2019.
The most likely time to get a ticket is lunchtime, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on weekdays.
Philly Parking Tickets By Time
Here's when, by hour in the day, parking enforcement officers gave out 5.7 million tickets from Jan. 2016 through Aug. 2019. Click on the buttons below to see the breakdown by morning or evening.
Data: Philadelphia Parking Authority
Credit: Nina Lin/NBC
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"Although people don’t like what we do, we are providing a service. We keep traffic, you know, moving," PPA parking enforcement officer Christine Quinn said in a interview while walking her beat. "We keep parking spaces open so people can come to the city."
She said the reason the number of tickets being written is going up is simple.
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"There’s a whole lot more people driving nowadays," Quinn said. "There’s a whole lot more cars out there."
NBC10 Investigators combed through the millions of tickets to find the most-ticketed blocks in the city, the likeliest time of day you'll get a ticket and the parking enforcement officers who have the best eye, i.e. the ones who cite the most vehicles.
Five of the 295 people who issued tickets for the PPA since the start of 2016 averaged more than 900 tickets a month.
Two averaged more than 1,100 tickets per month. At five days a week for 50 weeks a year (to allow for two weeks vacation), the top cop who averaged 1,331 tickets a month gave out 63 tickets per shift.
Quinn said the job, which pays $43,000 a year, is not an easy one.
"I’ve had someone tell me they were going to shoot me," she said.
She said someone did punch her in the face. Still, someone has to do it.
"It takes a lot to contain yourself just knowing that someone would go to that extent just by you speaking to them and asking them to relocate," Quinn said.
Here are the worst places for letting your meter run out, or parking in a loading zone for longer than the prescribed time on the sign.
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