I don't care what city in America you go to, parking is always a strange conversation. Most places certainly can't brag about the amount of parking they have. Or how convenient it is. On the other hand, after living in Portland for 20+ years, I can honestly say that parking in Bangtown is generally no big deal.

But for years, Bangor had parking enforcement officers out on the street ticketing violators wherever they had to. And folks certainly took their liberties with avoiding tickets. Jockeying their cars in parking spots, or even wiping the chalk mark off their tire altogether. So Bangor went a decided to work smarter instead of harder, according to the BDN.

In 2018, they began an automated system, where a vehicle equipped with several cameras, takes snapshots of cars and records the time. It has drastically reduced the number of people skipping out on violations. And at the same time drastically increased the amount of tickets written by the city. Like, 40% drastically.

Now, while I agree that folks shouldn't just abandon their car in a spot all day, I've always kind of disagreed with not being able to move your car to a different space. Sometimes parking in the garage isn't convenient, or it's too far away. Should I really be ticketed for moving to a new spot?

Granted, that's just my opinion, but it would seem the city could cut some slack somewhere if they're improving their revenue/tickets by some 40%. But hey, I'm just an Average Joe who'd rather keep his money. So I usually park in the garage. But still...

The moral of the story is that it used to be pretty darned easy to cheat the system, and now, not so much. Maybe it's time to play by the rules and act like an adult. Well, probably not. But I guess I'll at least park my car where I should.

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