Drive it or ticket-it

I donated my car. I am better off on foot than paying $100-200 a month for tickets. There's ticketing everywhere. There's ticketing for everything.

First of all, there's street cleaning almost every day. Unfortunately, living across the intersections in Chicago is actually a curse. You park your car after returning from a tiring work day and get some sleep. The next morning you wake up to a $50 orange gift-card from the Mayor. Why, this part of the road had to be cleaned, again. Funny part is that road didn't really look clean afterward anyway. Winter season brings you parking restriction boards. Now you have to drive around aimlessly begging for parking. I hated buying a pack of gum again and again from the nearby fresh mart just for the sake of parking.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Department of Revenue has a rapid $7 million year-over-year increase in parking ticket revenue; totaling $119.2 million. Chicago Parking Meters LLC got this amount with a promise to keep parking in Chicago subtle, for a 75-year lease. The city still has high charges and broken meters, some of which do not have proper calculators. We are forced to pay recklessly for our government's negligence. Despite the fact that the city has always been short of parking spaces.

The report says that around 327,650 tickets have been generated by faulty and expired meters in 2009, a 26 percent increase from last year's statistics. The Department of Revenue also reported a ten percent increase in parking and non-moving compliance violating vehicles. Whereas, a 85 percent increase in missing and expired license plates, a 22 percent increase in Meter violations, a 17 percent increase in violations for not displaying both front and rear license plates, and a 4 percent increase in expired number plates is also indicated by the department. The only declines are in expired city stickers, street cleaning and prohibited parking zone tickets. This is because these are much more obvious threats for drivers than falling for a seemingly harmless evil parking meter. Those meters need to be fixed immediately. In my opinion, there shouldn't be any meters at least near train stations to encourage mass transit, as those rides aren't free either.

I had a habit of turning at red lights, but after paying $200, I almost had a heart attack. The beautiful yellow boot is one of the few things that can make a grown man cry. But getting booted is still better than getting towed.

Just as a car needs maintenance which can cost quite a bit of money, a city too has expenses, which a government has to overcome by any means. In a city where your vehicle can be ticketed any time for any reason, where public transportation is suddenly getting expensive and jobs aren't paying enough, all a man has are his feet. Donate your cars to a noble cause and start walking now, before we start getting ticketed for just walking too, as the road you're walking on is built on your own tax money.