It happens in the blink of an eye. A van with two city parking enforcement officers drives down a street, scanning license plates with two cameras mounted on the roof. As the van moves down the block, plates of parked cars pop up on a screen until it suddenly turns red. Busted.
In less than a second, the Department of Transportation?s new License Plate Recognition technology has found and flagged a parking scofflaw. A process that used to require an enforcement officer entering individual license plates by hand is now completed in a split second.
The benefit to the city? Faster, more efficient collection of parking fines, Safety Division Chief Ken Strong says.
“We used to catch roughly 250 scofflaws every two weeks; now it?s 350 over the same time period since we started using this new technology,” he said.
Indeed, driving along Fallsway Street nets two scofflaws and one stolen vehicle in less than a minute. Finding stolen vehicles, Strong said, is a big plus of the technology.
“In March we found 38 stolen cars; that?s something we didn?t do before,” he said.
The $200,000 technology was tested in December and has since been added to four parking enforcement vans that now regularly canvass city streets for scofflaws ? drivers who have three or more parking tickets at least 30 days overdue. Because the database is merged with a national register of stolen cars, nearly 340,000 vehicles in all, the DOT can now assist police in locating and recovering stolen vehicles.
“It really is a big added benefit,” Strong said.
And there?s another plus for city residents who live in neighborhoods with residential parking restrictions, he said.
“The next step is using the technology to scan license plates to see if people have residential parking permits,” Strong said.
“In the past it was very labor intensive; now we can scan and tell immediately if a the car has a permit, then we can track the vehicles to make sure they don?t stay past residential time limits.”
Strong said the residential parking program could be implemented later this year.
Officers who use the new equipment said it helps them do a better job. “It saves us a lot of time,” said Kim Gorner, an officer in the scofflaw unit.
