Ask RiotACT: How much are parking fines in Canberra?

I just got another parking fine today for $108.

Here’s the stupidity of the situation. I use the Park Mobile App and entered my rego number with a ‘-‘. Guess what? The ACT Road Transport Authority can’t seem to match it with their system that doesn’t have the ‘-‘, so I keep getting infringement notices. Only found this was the cause when someone in the parking review group finally decided to tell me.

Insult to injury though, they threatened me that this would be the last time they would withdraw it. So now I have to make the system work by entering the ‘correct’ text, rather than the ACT getting the system to provide format validation of the rego number!!!

Digital services are great…. when they are actually designed for human users.

Maya123 said :

It depends on where you are parking, I think. There is a difference between parking on Government land and privately owned. I gather privately owned carparks can set their own fines.

They can, and they also can’t enforce them anymore if they don’t have toll gates, since they can’t see anything other than make, model and rego, but they aren’t allowed to look up your rego anymore to find out who you actually are. There is a city carpark in this exact situation, who also mispells the name of the location on the tickets they issue, which they have no power to collect on, and I am informed that as long as the location on the ticket is not correct, the ticket itself is invalid in the first instance and does not apply anyway, even if they could enforce it, which they can’t anymore. Beware this does not apply to government owned carparks, only private ones without boomgates (don’t try this in a boomgate carpark and then complain when they don’t let you out lol).

rommeldog56 said :

dungfungus said :

Not sure, but I was pinged $165 for accidentally parking in a reserved medical spot at a Woden carpark at about 11pm at night when the entire carpark was empty (and the sign was conveniently obscured by tree branches). Never made that mistake again I tell ya!

They got me in the exact same spot for the exact same reason.

Maybe we should ask our local member to change it to only apply during daytime hours when the carpark is otherwise full-ish….

Sorry that was a good laugh…. yes I enjoyed getting that ticket a whole 1 week after I got my P’s and was so excited to be a new driver. Lesson learned, always check at least 10m in each direction and behind tree branches wherever you park for tricky signs, or you will be paying a lot of parking tickets.

dungfungus said :

Not sure, but I was pinged $165 for accidentally parking in a reserved medical spot at a Woden carpark at about 11pm at night when the entire carpark was empty (and the sign was conveniently obscured by tree branches). Never made that mistake again I tell ya!

They got me in the exact same spot for the exact same reason.

It depends on where you are parking, I think. There is a difference between parking on Government land and privately owned. I gather privately owned carparks can set their own fines.

There’s some funny offenses in that document;
“park outside ticket space” $102
“park in occupied ticket space”. $102
So, no matter where you park you can be fined? A little more explanation of these rules would be nice.
Another cracker is this one;
“insert prohibited thing into parking meter”. Gotta love terminologies.

Only a person authorised by the governing body can issue infringements too, so I doubt a private contractor can fine you for illegal parking, only the parking inspectors hired by the government.

Try here…

http://www.legislation.act.gov.au/sl/2005-11/current/pdf/2005-11.pdf

About Page 310 onwards

Not sure, but I was pinged $165 for accidentally parking in a reserved medical spot at a Woden carpark at about 11pm at night when the entire carpark was empty (and the sign was conveniently obscured by tree branches). Never made that mistake again I tell ya!

“How do they determine how much you are charged?”

Whatever the traffic will bear.

Parking fines have nothing to do with the severity of the offense.