On a sunny Saturday morning during the first week of classes, I wandered Grounds between the Chapel and Newcomb Hall to ask students how they felt about parking enforcement. Is it too strict? Have you ever gotten a ticket? It wasn't a sexy topic - but people didn't hesitate to vent their complaints.
Parking officials are cracking down this semester on violators who don't pay fines in a timely manner and fail to respond to multiple notices about outstanding citations. For the first time, they will implement vehicle immobilization, or booting, as a way to convince those who have made a habit of parking illegally to change their ways.
The Department of Parking and Transportation plans to use a "reasonable person's test" when determining which cars to boot, Andy Mansfield, associate director for management, told me in an interview last week. Anyone who accumulates more than $250 in fines will have 14 days to appeal, but after that point, parking enforcement officers can tow the car or immobilize it with a boot, a device whose mention provoked more than a few knee-jerk reactions among students.
"It's terrible," second-year College student Matt Caplan interjected once I mentioned the new booting policy to him. "I was unaware there was a problem. If this goes through, I'll be sure to park [my car] off Grounds."
I asked students if they knew what a boot was - most did. My own first impression of it came from an episode of "The Simpsons" that originally aired in 1997. Barney, the habitual drunk, takes Homer's car for a joyride, and when Homer finally tracks it down, he finds it in the middle of a plaza between the two towers of the World Trade Center with a pile of tickets under the windshield wiper and a small clamp jutting from one of the wheels like a steel piranha. Homer's response - "D'Oh!" - is followed by a frantic rev of the engine, which succeeds in jolting the car forward, the boot still attached. His car moves at a snail's pace, however, so he commandeers a jackhammer and manages to drill through and remove the boot, but not before inflicting near-catastrophic damage on his vehicle. It was an extreme instance, one that would lead to an additional $500 fine and prosecution for damaging the boot were it to have happened at the University, but it illustrates that the boot is undeniably good at forcing delinquent drivers to face facts.
'Small Potatoes'\nLast week, two Cavalier Daily editors and I spoke with Mansfield and Parking and Transportation Director Rebecca White aboard a shiny, royal blue, V-Sabre-emblazoned motor coach their department purchased earlier this summer for about $400,000. Massive and fitted out with Wi-Fi, DirecTV and leather seating, it is the flagship of White's charter fleet, which earned $500,000 during the 2009-10 fiscal year, an unexpectedly strong financial result. (White was the one who suggested we meet inside the bus, and a driver parked it on McCormick Road across from Edgar Allan Poe's Range room during the interview.) We discussed other matters first - ZipCars, UTS 411, future plans for ride sharing - before they told us more about the boot.
"It's got that connotation," Mansfield admitted, when asked why the University hadn't already implemented boots, which cost $50 to remove. Used by "over half" of universities nationwide, he said, the boot is intended "to help people not get into financial debt." He and White want it to act as a deterrent for the University's most frequent violators and keep people who continually defy parking laws from allowing their charges to escalate further.
"We want to modify people's behavior, and more importantly, use the spaces the way we want them to be used," White said.
At the same time, parking enforcement places an undue strain on the department, White said, and is prone to sucking away time and resources spent hunting down violators visiting from out of town or who are no longer affiliated with the school. The boot will only be an added tool in this collection effort.
Financially, the boot will likely also be a boon to her department, although both she and Mansfield were hesitant about saying so. Citations brought in $572,000 in revenue during the 2009-10 fiscal year - "small potatoes," White said, when compared to the $7.1 million earned in permit sales. The average parking citation costs the violator $45, while a permit can go upwards of $444, the price of a pass for the Lambeth lot. Revenue earned from parking citations goes into a general fund for maintenance and construction of P&T parking lots and garages.
"We'd rather sell a parking permit," White said, although emphasizing that impelling drivers to follow the rules and alleviating the burden of tracking down violators are the primary reasons behind implementing the boot. "We would be thrilled if we wrote zero tickets in an academic year."
A Common Tool\nAlthough the boot does jam a few nerves - some people I spoke with had an instant, visceral reaction to it - the University's policy at this point is roughly in line with those at other area schools. At Virginia Tech, cars are booted upon receiving their fifth citation within a semester, even if the violator has paid all fines promptly. At George Mason University, any vehicle which impedes the flow of traffic will be booted, as well as receive a citation and fee that cannot be appealed. At the College of William & Mary, drivers will be booted if they rack up three tickets and fail to pay or appeal them within 14 days of the date of the latest ticket, or if they receive two tickets and fail to pay them within 30 days of the later ticket.
"I know friends who have held off until graduation not paying their tickets," fourth-year College student Amy Vu said, when asked whether she pays her parking tickets on time. (She does.) Does she think booting is justified? "I think it's fair, if it's a couple [citations] you don't pay on time."
Her plight is one most can relate to: "I pull into a spot for 10 minutes, and I'll get a ticket," she said. "But I know what I'm getting into parking in those spaces."
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