Getting in and out of a parking space in the Near North Side’s car-heavy Streeterville can be war, and one resident group hopes that the city’s ticket-writers are on their side.

The city’s meter maids in the Department of Revenue were much more active in the last year, dishing out nearly 30 percent more parking tickets than the year before, according to a recent data set from the department.

The highest concentration of tickets was in the 42nd Ward, where citations rose nearly 50 percent, from 206,157 to 300,347 recorded fines. Conversely, the ward saw a considerable decrease in violations that led to car-booting, with incidents dropping about 50 percent from 1,539 to 823 cases.

Those numbers were first reported last week by the blog the Expired Meter.

The institution of public parking is a vital part of any city’s revenue stream, and in Chicago, while the municipal government doesn’t collect money from its parking meters (that coin is picked up by a private company which owns the meter system), the city still earns a profit by ticketing violations at its some 36,000 pay-to-park spaces.

Though Streeterville leads the pack in cited violations, parking tickets aren’t a big problem for the neighborhood’s residents, said community leader Brian Hopkins.

“We live downtown, we get it,” said Hopkins, who was until recently the president of Streeterville Organization of Active Residents, a prominent neighborhood group in the area just north of the Loop.

The group takes parking issues seriously. In its 2004 Streeterville Neighborhood Plan, SOAR urged developers to limit the creation of new above-ground parking spaces, and called on existing institutions to incorporate parking areas into their properties to lessen auto congestion on the street. The group has since criticized Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s for developing a 13-story parking garage in the area.

Hopkins said that a large number of Streeterville residents either choose to walk to most places in the neighborhood or don’t own a car at all. Furthermore, he said, “those who do [own a car] typically don’t complain about their vehicles being subject to strict enforcement.”

He added that the increased presence of parking enforcement “is partially offset by the fact that downtown residents enjoy a wider array of public transportation options and a higher density of iGo and Zip cars than any other neighborhood.”

The real problem — and the one city ticket-writers should be focusing on, Hopkins said — are those who turn parking into a business.

Parking valets, he said, are notorious for “blocking off what little street parking is available for their use, rather than pay to leave their customers cars in an off-street lot.”

“A favorite trick of theirs is to hold cars on standby until just before a rush hour parking ban ends at 6:00 p.m.,” he said. “At 5:59 p.m., they suddenly move the cars they’ve been holding to metered street parking, and then work in teams throughout the evening to maintain control of the spots.”

He noted that tour bus companies also add to the problem by holding court over several spaces at once and “polluting the air with diesel fumes as they idle for hours.”

There are currently about 110 companies with valet licenses in Chicago, many of whom which operate at over a dozen locations, including clubs, condominiums and hospitals throughout the city.

According to data retrieved by Skyline from the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, the city cited valet services for 620 violations — ranging from operational penalties to knowingly supplying fake information on license applications — in the past year. That number is down from 910 citations in 2010.

Calls to a number of valet services in the city were not returned for this story.

Hopkins said that the city should continue to crack down on firms that operate in the downtown area, where some engage in practices that prevent Streeterville residents from finding street parking in their own neighborhood.

The rally cry against valet companies in Streeterville is nothing new. In early 2009, citing a slew of complaints from residents and business owners, Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) pushed through a number of amendments to the city’s code which aimed at tightening regulations on valet parking, which he called “one of the least regulated industries in Chicago.”

Among the changes, Reilly’s ordinance increased general fines for valet penalties from between $50 and $500 per offense to $150 and $1,000 for each violation. The measure also upped the requirement for establishments with valet services to utilize off-street and garage parking, a condition that sought to free up downtown street parking.

More recently, Mayor Rahm Emanuel considered a provision to charge valet companies an hourly fee for conducting services, but that proposal was nixed ahead of last month’s City Council approval of the 2012 city budget. The spending plan did include a doubling of the city’s annual valet service fee to $600.

Hopkins said that residents in Streeterville will consent to shelling out fees for parking violations, as long as valet parking services and bus companies are made to do the same.

“What aggravates us,” Hopkins said, “is the belief that flagrant violations by parking valet companies and tour buses are not enforced by the City with the same aggressive approach they take with our cars.”

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By Andrew Schaefer from River North
Posted: 12/17/2011 1:23 PM

I've personally seen valets handing cash over to the parking people, so my guess is that one reason valet parking is tolerated so much is because the people supposed to be ticketing it have been bought.