Fines for illegal parking now more expensive
By Emily Turner
Skiff Staff

Shannon Flood said she knows she and other students will have to find another place to park other than the public streets surrounding campus.

Flood, a senior international marketing major, said she is just one of the many commuter students affected by the recent cost increase in parking citations issued by the Fort Worth Police Department. City Council approved the increase in September and it went into effect Oct. 1.

“Now that I know tickets will be more, I am going to leave my house earlier or have to park in a parking lot that is a long walk from my class,” Flood said. “I know a lot of people who purposely park illegally off campus to avoid paying the more expensive fine for parking illegally on campus.”

Fort Worth police officer Jamie Johnson patrols the neighborhoods surrounding campus and said the TCU parking fines have been higher than the cost of the city’s citations for as long as he can remember. In the past, parking in an illegal zone on the street has been the cheaper option for students, he said.

“Before the increase, students were making the conscious decision to take a $15 fine over a TCU fine that might be $50,” Johnson said. “Now that the city fine has gone up and there is the possibility of being towed, I would think that this would have a dramatic effect on people and where they park.”

Even though each fine varies in cost depending on the violation, Johnson said the cost of all Fort Worth tickets has increased. He said the $100 tow-away zone and the disabled parking zone are the most expensive violations.
Fort Worth Municipal Court Director Elsa Paniagua helped instigate the fine increase and said the city increased the fine amount for two reasons.

“We were having problems with people parking in illegal zones, and we needed to find some way to prevent this from happening,” Paniagua said. “We also realized that our fine amounts had not increased in several years.”

Fort Worth Public Information Officer Pat Svacina said that not only will parking fines be more expensive but that students should also expect more enforcement in the areas around campus. He also said TCU police have no control over the surrounding neighborhoods.

Svacina said that although the fines were not about raising money, increasing them should encourage drivers to comply with parking regulations.

“Some of the fines were increased significantly because drivers will not obey the regulations unless the fines are steep,” Svacina said. “The higher fines will result in an estimated $350,000 increase in city revenue. This is a very small amount compared to the city $700 million operating budget.”

Johnson said one of the reasons illegal parking needs to be eliminated near TCU is that extra vehicles make it difficult for emergency vehicles to drive down a residential street. Police are going to concentrate on enforcing tow-away zone violations, he said.

Johnson said he gets the impression that students knowingly park illegally on the streets to avoid receiving a more expensive fine from the TCU police.

“I think there is adequate parking on campus, but some students think that they are not as close to the school as they would like to be,” Johnson said. “I can’t imagine parking remaining a problem with the new fines and the possibility of being towed.”