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Meanwhile, revenue from legal parking fees has ebbed over the past three years, dropping from $63 million in 2016 to $60 million last year.

Furtado said while there are many factors behind the increase in ticket revenue, among the primary reasons are advances in technology — such as improved photo recognition — while new ParkPlus clients have also come on-stream, providing more opportunities for fine generation.

As well, the conversion of residential parking permits to an online service has added 346 lane-kilometres to the agency’s enforcement portfolio, Furtado said.

With the city about a third of the way through its annual spring street sweeping blitz, the parking authority has been ramping up enforcement efforts for vehicles that aren’t moved on designated cleaning days. After five weeks, nearly 30,000 violation tickets have been issued, closing in on triple the number of tickets issued all of last year, while 540 vehicles have been towed.

Photo by Yolande Cole / Postmedia

Even if all of those tickets were paid within the first 10 days at a rate of $80, it would still put some $2.4 million in the agency’s coffers. That number would rise to $3.6 million if the tickets aren’t paid within 30 days, at the maximum fine of $120.

Furtado said the boom in violations is the result of a shift from having parking officers manually tagging vehicles that haven’t moved during designated cleaning times, to using the authority’s fleet of nine camera vehicles to flag violators.