I Promise, Nearly Done

And now the fourth post on UGA parking ticket data. Yes, you're sick of reading about it, but I'm not sick (yet) of writing about it. In previous posts I've looked at how many tickets were written in the 2016-2017 academic year, what lots were more likely to have tickets written, and even what color car is most likely to get a ticket.

Today, what charge is most likely to occur.

On my list there are 25 possible reasons a ticket may be written, plus a 26th that is blank with three tickets written for that, probably a data mispunch or perhaps some special case or, most likely, they forgot to put the charge in the database while writing the ticket. Anyway, below you'll find a rank order of the various charges and the count. Dominating the list is "no parking permit," with 15,184 of the total 27,439 tickets written that year, or 55.5 percent if you like it broken down that way. In other words, over half of all tickets are given to cars that didn't bother to get a parking permit in the first place. Second on the list is "out of zone/region" which means, best I can tell, folks who had a permit for one lot but decided they could park in a different lot just because they're special. Some of the charges I'm unsure about, like "theft of parking services."  Also, who the hell parks in a fire lane? Turns out, 37 such tickets were written. And who the hell, especially, parks in a handicapped zone? Scum, I'd say, but 127 tickets were written for "disability space" and 53 for "disability access zone."

Below the list, I have a few words about some of the charges after the table.

Ticket Charge		Count
No Parking Permit		15184
Out of Zone\Region		7594
Courtesy Note - Vehicle Linked		931
Unauthorized Area		905
Patient Parking		761
Failure to display		535
Yellow Zone		248
Sidewalk\Grass		179
Football Parking		153
No Permit Displayed		141
Disability Space		127
Improper Parking		125
Theft of Parking Services		120
DP with No Valid UGA Permit		112
Expired Permit		72
Beyond Time Limit		67
Disability Access Zone		53
No Meter Receipt Displayed		38
Fire Lane		37
No Overnight Parking		29
Improperly Displayed Receipt		8
Multiple Vehicles Parked		7
Alter/Falsify Permit		6
No Charge Entered		3
Obstructing Traffic		3
Expired Meter		1
Grand Total		27439

There were 133 "football parking" tickets written. Most of these were on the various campus decks and, no surprise, on Football Saturdays in Athens, when campus gets crowded and the port-a-lets come out to play. More seem to come from the South Campus Deck than any other lot.



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