Can I milk the parking ticket I already have?

January 3, 2006 7:22 AM

I got a ticket this morning on my car in Boston on Newbury Street. Do I have to keep paying the meter all day or does the ticket allow me to just keep my car there for as long as I need to? It's 25 bucks for another ticket, and its 25 cents for 15 minutes on the meter. Im out of quarters, im lazy, and I want to go back to bed.
posted by pwally to human relations (19 comments total)

What makes you think you couldn't get multiple tickets?
posted by odinsdream at 7:25 AM on January 3, 2006

In NY the cops are allowed to place as many tickets as they wish. They could technically write one after another, but generally obey the guideline of no more than one per hour. When the fines get high enough (200 or 250 I think), your car gets towed. I'd imagine Boston has similiar rules.
posted by miniape at 7:28 AM on January 3, 2006

They give multiple tickets here in Raleigh. Move the car.
posted by mediareport at 7:29 AM on January 3, 2006

You've never seen a car with multiple tickets decorating its windshield? Well, go back to bed and check yours this evening, and you will.
posted by mojohand at 7:29 AM on January 3, 2006

Yeah, dude, this is Boston we're talking about. Pahking is everything - plus, it's snowing where you are, right?

Lucky your ass doesn't get towed to Suffolk Downs!
posted by Saucy Intruder at 7:38 AM on January 3, 2006

It's a 2 hour limit for parking in Boston as far as I know. That means you can only park there for only 2 hours. Yes, you can keep feeding the meter and hope that the same parking officer doesn't come by again but they will.....oh they will.
posted by eatcake at 7:42 AM on January 3, 2006

Until recently (past couple of years) the multiple ticket wasn't all that common in Boston, at least in the Back Bay.

On the occasional times I drove to work I used to park in front of my building on Boylston Street and eat the one ticket I'd get for staying there all day - Same price as the garage but my car was steps away. Then I came out one evening to $75 worth of orange goodness on my windshield. Ended that practice pretty quick.

(on a related note, I don't think they've declared a snow emergency for today...)
posted by jalexei at 8:16 AM on January 3, 2006

When I worked on a similarly popular and crowded street in Los Angeles, I got a parking ticket in the morning, and thought "oh well, I got a $30 parking space today." I returned to my car at the end of the day to find SIX parking tickets where the original had been. I'm not sure of the laws in Boston, but I imagine that they're the same.
posted by pazazygeek at 8:40 AM on January 3, 2006

To repeat and amplify eatcake's warning: feeding the meter won't necessarily stop you from getting tickets. The two-hour limit applies to the parking space; it's not just the limit of what you can crank into the meter at one time.
posted by alms at 8:44 AM on January 3, 2006

I've seen multiple tickets on cars in Boston many times before. I can't speak to how long those cars were there, but it certainly can happen.
posted by MarkAnd at 8:54 AM on January 3, 2006

Trust a former Berklee student: You will get another ticket.
posted by cribcage at 8:56 AM on January 3, 2006

Wait, so you can't keep feeding a meter for two more hours once you've already been there for two hours? But I've done that sooo many times and never gotten a ticket. Is that really true, and I've just been amazingly lucky? (I live in Los Angeles.)
posted by rio at 9:31 AM on January 3, 2006

Legally, you can't just keep feeding the meter, but it's fairly easy to get away with. Doing it in plain view of a meter maid isn't a good idea.
posted by Bezbozhnik at 10:34 AM on January 3, 2006

Well its 1:38 and I havent gotten a second ticket, good thing I slept through all of your answers. Time to move my car!
posted by pwally at 10:39 AM on January 3, 2006

rio: Wait, so you can't keep feeding a meter for two more hours once you've already been there for two hours?

I think it usually says on the meter that the car must be moved in 2 hours. Personally I've worked in Somerville, MA for five years and for 4.5 of those years fed the meter every 2 hours. I'd stay in the same spot for 8 hours every day. The meter maids know everyone does it and don't enforce the "move your car after 2 hours" part of the law.
They do, however, appear to drop from the sky the minute your meter is up and they will double ticket.
posted by jdl at 11:38 AM on January 3, 2006

In some places, the meter maids put chalk on your tires. If they come back two hours later and your car has chalk from last time, you can get a ticket. Not sure how much that happens, but that's how it's done.
posted by SuperNova at 11:47 AM on January 3, 2006

Boston is weird. Not only will you get a second ticket if you simply don't feed the meter, but they can ticket you for being parked at a time-delimited meter for too long. Cops on the BU campus (just a few blocks from Newbury) used to give me multiple tickets for being at a "two hour maximum" meter, even though I fed the meter diligently. Annoying.
posted by mykescipark at 3:15 PM on January 3, 2006

If they come back two hours later and your car has chalk from last time, you can get a ticket.

Yep. Chalking tires and checking them after your time is up (regardless of whether you've fed the meter again) is the norm around the NCSU campus in Raleigh.
posted by mediareport at 10:35 PM on January 3, 2006

You left your car parked on an expired meter for four hours on Newbury Street, and you didn't get a ticket? Sorry — but as someone who has spent ten years commuting in that neighborhood, I declare shenanigans.

...If only for sake of the next guy who stumbles across this thread, thinking he'll get away with blowing off a Newbury Street meter. It doesn't happen. I don't for a second believe that it did, here.
posted by cribcage at 10:42 PM on January 4, 2006