If you follow this blog, you know I can’t get enough parking ticket analysis. One of my favorite posts tracked out-of-state drivers around the city using tickets, and found, for example, that Californians get the most tickers in the hippest parts of Brooklyn like Williamsburg and Greenpoint. Those out-of-state tickets got me thinking. Do people driving from all fifty states get parking tickets in New York?

Thanks once again to Open Data, we can find out. It turns out that the answer is a resounding yes. Not only is that the case, but New York City reported parking tickets from Puerto Rico, Mexico and eleven out of thirteen Canadian provinces and territories as well!

The map below shows the total number of dollars per year each state and province/territory is contributing to the New York City parking ticket economy:

The map shows over half a billion dollars in fines for New York State drivers alone each year. The list of top ten states by dollar amount is below:

It’s also amazing to see that Canadian provinces contribute a bit under a million dollars a year! O Canada! I thought Hawaii might be the smallest domestic contributor at ~30K/year, but that honor went to Wyoming, at ~25K/year.

The problem with this view of dominance is that it overweights larger states, since more people means more drivers means more tickets. So I made another map, looking at the total number of dollars in parking tickets per resident per year from each state:

This map makes it more obvious that drivers in states closer to New York are more likely to get tickets here. A few standouts: New York City fines an average of $28.77 in parking tickets from each and every New York State resident per year. New Jersey is a strong second place, with $9.09 per resident per year. Indiana has a particularly high rate when compared to neighboring states in the midwest. Arizona leads out the south western states, clocking in at 32 cents per resident. The top 10 list is below:

So we learned what we already knew as New Yorkers. There is no hiding from parking tickets here. From California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters. This land is made for you and me and getting tickets in New York City.

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Parking Ticket data from NYC Open Data portal here.

US State Shape file here.

Canadian Shape file here.

Analysis done with Pandas via iPython

Maps created in QGIS and exported to cartodb



