Parking Ticket Efficiency

Having overstayed my street parking in the city by about half an hour (thank you random Japanese restaurant for bringing out my meal so long after my friends that one had already finished and departed for K) I returned from dinner to be greeted with the sight of almost the entire street having little orange envelopes held between windscreen and wiper. Included was my car. Awesome.

Opening up my little gift from the gray ghosts I almost had a double take: gone are the ratty old carbon-papered hand-written near-illegible parking infringements of old. They've been replaced with sterile and precise, heat-imprinted semi-glossy parking receipts, as if I'd just purchased myself (at great cost might I add) after-the-fact parking. Its got the whole kit and kaboodle on it: besides date and time it describes my car, its location and the offence in exacting detail (no more weaseling out of these on one slightly off or illegible detail anymore). Observing them on one of my non-offending days over at Parramatta I'd say it would have taken the parking officer about a minute to type in the relevant information and print it out.

Flipping my little receipt-of-debt over to investigate my options, I noticed that they've also streamlined the payment process. The orange envelope is now pretty much just for show (and to protect the receipt within from the elements I suppose, heat imprinted paper loves the sun): you don't mail them back anymore, hell you don't even have to rock up to the infringements office to pay. Parking infringement resolution, meet the internet! I just had to go to the handy-dandy website on the back of the receipt, credit card in hand, and just a minute of form filling later (about as long as it took to print the damn thing out I guess) I'm now less one parking infringement (and $75 bucks).

Thanks Sydney City Council! Putting a positive media spin on it though I've figured out that if I avoid parking tickets (slash receipts) for the rest of the year (this being my first) I can whittle down the cost of overstayed parking in the city to 20 cents per day averaged over the year. Doesn't feel as bad if I look at it that way.