The Data

All measures are broken down by the dimension ‘Violation Issue Date’, the data is filtered by ‘Violation Issue Date (MDY), which only reflects the selected years.

To be frank — New York City rakes in the money, and that’s an under statement. It’s the #1 grossing city by ticket revenue in the US, beating out fellow city rival LA by 2x.

In terms of 2017 city violations alone:

—The ‘Fine Amount’ equals to over $90 for every NYC resident (children included).

—The final ‘Payed Amount’, $674 million, covers 75% of the Department of Transportation’s yearly budget.

What Do People Get Fined For?

— ‘No parking due to street cleaning’ is the most common violation (after 3 years of living in the city, I still do not know what alternate side parking means).

— ‘Speeding in a school zone’ garnered the second most tickets, but at a much cheaper fine amount.

— ‘New York City classics’ = fire hydrants & running red lights tickets were issued to over 2.1 million drivers.

To Plea or Not to Plea

28.36% of people take their ticket to court;

— 9.07% are found guilty

— 7.19% have their ticket reduced

— 8.85% are found not guilty

People went to court and were found guilty for:

“No parking due to street cleaning” violation

Expired inspection stickers

Parking in a fire hydrant spot

People went to court and were found not guilty for:

Failure to display meter receipts

Double parking

Oddest Violations = Greatest Reductions

For those faithful enough to take their case to court, the below treemap is sorted in size by the greatest % reduction from the amount of original fine. The darker the color, the greater the monetary amount reduced.

— “Detached trailers” get off easy, with an 88% fine reduction.

— “Parking in a handicap spot without a permit” usually sees the greatest monetary amount reduced, avg. $76.