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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIn a move to deter drivers from parking in bike lanes and crosswalks, and in front of fire hydrants, Indianapolis authorities are poised to give meter contractor Park Indy an incentive to issue tickets to lawbreakers.
The Indianapolis City-County Council is set to vote Monday evening on a proposal that would alter the city’s 50-year contract with Park Indy. The amendment would give Park Indy the opportunity to accrue more revenue by ticketing for non-meter-related offenses, and city officials hope that shift will incentivize parking attendants to help enforce traffic laws.
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett announced the measure as part of a larger infrastructure speech, in which he also announced intentions to install 25 flashing lights at school crossings on major thoroughfares. These move are intended to increase cyclist and pedestrian safety after a record 40 pedestrians were killed by drivers in Indianapolis last year.
“We are in the midst of a post-COVID, specifically, a heightened sense of awareness of issues regarding pedestrian safety because we’ve seen an increase in the amount of conflicts between vehicles, people and cyclists,” Department of Public Works Director Brandon Herget said at a July 20 committee meeting.
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department issues the vast majority of non-meter-related tickets in the city, with an average of about 23 per day in 2022.
Pedestrian safety advocate Eric Holt told IBJ the proposal is a step in the right direction, but whether or not it’s impactful depends on how much effort Park Indy puts into non-metered enforcement. Right now, he said, it seems as if there is little punishment for drivers parking where they shouldn’t.
“Especially with bike lanes, sidewalks, crosswalks and trails, downtown seems to definitely be a real issue with IMPD not being interested or not having enough manpower. Probably a little bit of both,” he said.
The issue of cars parking in bike lanes is also the focus of a Twitter account that tracks such incidents.
The revenue sharing aspect of the Park Indy contract is complicated, DPW Senior Program Manager of Revenue Sam Beres told the committee. The system is two-tiered, in which Park Indy collects the first 70% of every $730,000 collected in a given month. When Park Indy collects above that threshold, the percentage Park Indy receives drops to 40% with the city collecting the other 60%.
The contractor is already authorized to ticket for parking violations. But, “they only have a financial incentive to enforce very specific things, basically people overstaying their meters or not paying,” Beres said.
According to the DPW presentation, Park Indy issued 90,000 citations in 2022 with 98% being metered citations. Just 10,700 tickets were issued for non-metered parking violations that year, with 2,129 coming from Park Indy and the rest from IMPD.
“For those handful of tickets they’ve issued, they’re not keeping any of the money from those,” Beres said.
Park Indy can also initiate the towing of cars in certain circumstances, he said.
The contract change might lead to a slight uptick in money coming in for the city. But Beres and Herget said that increase in revenue isn’t the goal of the proposal. The city only receives about $1 million a year from parking enforcement, Beres said.
If the proposal is approved, it would be a trial period through 2025. Park Indy would also continue to focus on areas where meters are located, like downtown, Mass Ave and Broad Ripple.
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The Park Indy contract was terrible, and hey we just missed our most recent chance to get out of it, but hey, it runs out in 2060.
See? These are the type of things to bash Joe Hogsett for. We could be making way more money on parking meters.
But that’s not the leadership Jefferson Shreve is after. He likely wants more deals in which the city gets 40% of the profit and a private vendor gets 60% of the profit.
https://www.ibj.com/articles/72524-movement-afoot-to-exit-citys-50-year-parking-meter-pact-in-2020
I don’t even know how the Park Indy contract falls on Hogsett. It was authorized by a Republican mayor.
He had a window to get out of it or to negotiate a better deal. He passed.
Definitely secondary to the actual deal which is awful for taxpayers (read the linked story), but still a mark on Hogsett.
What you all are missing is that Ballard signed a contract, approved by the council, that had substantial penalties for ending the contract early. Hogsett’s hands were tied. I’ve studied the contract, and written about it. It’s positively awful. The 60%/40% split isn’t even the worst of it. There is also a provision that once a certain number of places are taken out of circulation, we have to pay the vendor the full amount those spaces would taken in if occupied 100% of the time. No doubt we have been paying out under this provision.
When it comes to local Indy politics, there isn’t a dime’s difference between the Dems and the GOP. Both are all about raising taxes and fees and handing that money over to the corporate interests which really run the city.
Bike Lanes, Fire Lanes, Double Parking. Ticket them all!
Turning on your hazards does not allow you to conveniently make your own space.
Indy should be doing what Denver, CO (and dozens of other major cities) are doing on this old-school parking situation. They are using a cutting edge technology named Safety Sticks and total parking operation (lots and garages) from MPS Intelligence Infrastructure.
https://www.mpsintelligentinfrastructure.com/ It’s a total game-changer for municipalities with huge revenue enhancements for those cities, counties and state governments. Colleges and universities have also started to embrace this new, disruptive technology (all patent-protected) by MPS.
Once our Park Indy contract is up in 2060 we should look into this! /s
Property and food and beverage taxes are the only taxes they’re interested in, accept when it comes out to handing TIF funds to developers. Oh wait, that comes out of your property taxes.
Why bother raising the penalties on something that isn’t enforced anyway? Yawn!