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This Neighborhood Got the Most Parking Tickets in NYC Last Year

By Nicole Levy | March 6, 2017 1:56pm | Updated on March 6, 2017 2:48pm
 Parking tickets for passenger cars were down citywide in 2016, a study found.
Parking tickets for passenger cars were down citywide in 2016, a study found.
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Shutterstock/ Sam Aronov

Drivers parking on the Upper East Side were the most likely to be ticketed in 2016, a new study from apartment listing website RentHop found.

Police officers from the 19th Precinct issued 238,338 parking violations to passenger vehicles, costing a total of $19,812,010, in that neighborhood from January to December 2016.

The findings of the RentHop study published Monday were based on an analysis of publicly available city data.

The good news is that the city of New York issued 18.3 percent fewer parking tickets on the Upper East Side — and 17.5 percent fewer parking tickets across the five boroughs — this past calendar year than it did in 2015.

The Big Apple's second highest-ticketed neighborhood, Astoria, also saw a drop in the number of tickets issued to motorists parking there: from 260,232 tickets in 2015 to 219,853 in 2016.

"It's hard to say why," said study author Shane Leese, a data scientist at RentHop. Leese hypothesizes that the city intentionally diverted its efforts from enforcing parking regulations in 2016, he said, "because I don't think traffic has gotten any better, and there are no fewer people or cars."

Added Leese, "Maybe the resources are being used on Trump Tower," where NYPD officers provided then-President-elect Donald Trump round-the-clock protection before Inauguration Day.

"Officers issue parking summonses at their discretion when and where violations are observed. This has nothing to do with Trump Tower security," the NYPD said in a statement.

Three of the neighborhoods that received significantly fewer parking tickets this year compared to last are in Queens, according to the RentHop study. They're ranked below:

► Queens Village/Rosedale — 35.1 percent decrease, down to 49,372 tickets worth $3.46 million
► Fresh Meadows/Jamaica Hills — 32.2 decrease, down to 72,063 tickets worth $4.55 million
► St. Albans/South Jamaica — 31.5 percent decrease, down 24,029 tickets worth $1.74 million
► Washington Heights — 29.3 percent decrease, down to 52,854 tickets worth $4.17 million
► Midtown North/Hell’s Kitchen — 29.1 percent decrease, down to 131,149 tickets worth $12.9 million 

The year-over-year change in the number of parking tickets issued in each neighborhood is pictured in the interactive map below.

The two neighborhoods that saw an increase in the number of tickets issued year-over-year are Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn and the North Shore/Stapleton area on Staten Island, which rose by 5 and 2 percent, respectively.

As for neighborhoods that contributed the least to the Department of Finance's coffers in 2016, those would be the South Shore of Staten Island, where 8,575 tickets worth $654,815 were issued, and Far Rockaway, where 16,854 tickets worth $1.2 million were issued. (Note: those values don't include late fees.)

The citywide downward trend in parking tickets is unlikely to continue, Leese predicted: "As congestion gets worse, they're going to have that money some way," he said. "So I think we're going to see [tickets numbers] rebound."