Story:
PARKatlanta is a private company under the supervision of the City of Atlanta Department of Public Works. This company has been handling the City’s parking operations since 2009, when it made a 7-year agreement with the City to enforce parking laws, write parking tickets, and collect ticket payments. PARKatlanta pays $5.5 million each year to the City of Atlanta for the right to manage the city’s parking spaces and collect ticket payments. The company’s contract is up in September 2016, and the City must decide whether to extend the contract with PARKatlanta or to bring the parking operations back to the City of Atlanta.
Numerous issues with PARKatlanta have been brought up by citizens and the media, including: aggressive ticketing behavior, violations of due process, impact on the local economy, shortage of free parking, and invasive parking rules that affect residents. This project will analyze parking trends, patterns, and utilizations to assist the City of Atlanta in its decision to either renew PARKAtlanta’s contract or bring parking back in-house to the Department of Public Works. The project will also rethink current methods of parking to determine if alternative parking models and methods of transportation can provide more efficient solutions for the City of Atlanta and its citizens.
PARKAtlanta Revenue AnalysisRevenue from Meters
Here, monthly revenue is plotted for each type of PARKAtlanta meter: Single–space (SSM), Muti-space (MSM), and the newer ParkMobile meters, from Jan 2013 to Sep 2015:
PARKAtlanta’s revenue from the meters averages around $450,000 per month. This monthly average revenue has increased by 17% from 2013 to 2015 (from $412,000 to $485,000 – averaged on February to September each year). Possible reasons for this increase could be the installation of additional meters, greater utilization of meters, or higher rates.
Now let’s see their revenue from tickets!
Revenue from Tickets
PARKAtlanta’s revenue from the tickets averages around $550,000 per month which is more than the revenue from the meters ($450,000).
On average, 80% of this revenue comes from past–due tickets!
August 2015 is a really interesting month! The past–due revenue is decreased to 50% which means many people paid their ticket on time during this month! The difference is statistically significant (I did the math!) so it is extremely unlikely that it happened by chance. Any guess why!?