Toronto will pursue out-of-province drivers for unpaid parking tickets
Posted June 17, 2011 7:41 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Toronto’s parking department wants to hire a company to collect $3.5 million worth of unpaid parking tickets issued each year to out-of-province drivers.
The city has made a request for bidders and wants the winning company to help it obtain the ownership and address information of non-Ontarians. The bid will be awarded mid-August and the contract will begin Sept. 1.
Typically, when drivers from Ontario get a parking ticket, the provincial government sends the city their home addresses within a day. With out-of-province drivers, the city doesn’t have access to vehicle owner information. More than half of them are from Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, Florida, Michigan and New York.
With no way of locating them to process the tickets, the tickets are usually cancelled.
In a typical year, the city issues about 2.85 million parking tickets and has a collection rate of about 80 per cent, said Anthony Fabrizi, manager of parking operations.
About 3.7 per cent or 103,519 tickets are issued annually to out-of-province drivers, Fabrizi said.
The remainder of issued tickets is not recoverable because some people die, move or stop driving, he said.
“This really isn’t about the money as it is about fairness,” Fabrizi told CityNews.ca.
Some Torontonians have argued they shouldn’t have to pay if out-of-province parking violators do not pay, he explained.
This “just levels the playing field,” he said.
The winning bidder will get a one-year contract, and the city has the option of renewing the one-year contract three more times.
