One of the worst parts of living in New York City is the tickets. Everyone hates them. There’s no worse feeling than seeing a camera flash behind you, only to look down at your speedometer and see a dreaded “36 MPH”.

However, as a Master’s student specializing in Data Science, I can see a sliver lining: NYC Open Data’s Camera and Parking Violation Dataset, which contains 78 Million violations and is publicly available.

I utilized AWS to embark on this journey, taking over 100,000 rows of data. First, I set out to explore differences in driving and ticketing habits between the five boroughs, Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Anyone who’s ever visited the five boroughs would expect there to be significant differences between Manhattan and the other four boroughs.

 

The first graph demonstrates that Manhattan has about a quarter of all violations. One important note is that the county names are not cleaned. Violations in Queens may be categorized under “Q” or “QN” and Brooklyn may be “BK” or “K” for Kings County. Nonetheless, the scope of this project is to get a quicker look at big data, so we’ll leave this data as is. Additionally, in the full dataset, Manhattan has a similar proportion of violations, so this snapshot does lend a good perspective.

One would assume that Manhattan holds a similar proportion of fine amounts. However, fine amounts by county is distributed with far more fine dollars from Manhattan.

Before assuming that Manhattan is the number one source of income from parking and camera violations, let’s make sure that Manhattan actually succeeds in getting all those violators to pay up.

That doesn’t seem right. Why does Manhattan not have significantly more payments than the other boroughs? Despite the fact that Manhattan issues significantly more fine dollar amounts than the other boroughs, it does not bring in that much more than the others. Let’s check the payment reductions.

This is quite an interesting tidbit of information! Manhattan drivers are receiving the lion’s share of reductions. What causes Manhattan’s overweight in payment reductions? Does NYC favor city people? Are the tickets dispensed easier, or perhaps are the judges more lenient?

Let’s think about this for a second. What is different about the streets of Manhattan? That’s a silly question, because Manhattan streets are more different than similar to the other boroughs. The hustle and bustle; the honks and the sirens; and the trucks and construction closures are all part of what makes Manhattan unique, busy, and well, frantic.

But let’s brainstorm for a second. Who is most likely to get tickets in Manhattan. My first guess in trucks. They idle, park wherever is closest to their unloading zone, and seem to be otherwise not concerned with the NYC orange envelopes. Why?

Most likely, truck drivers are usually employees, not business owners. Additionally, large corporations cut huge deals with the city to dramatically reduce the amount due in fines. They receive ridiculous numbers of the infamous orange envelopes, but they could care less because piles of tickets are heading straight to the shredder. Let’s look into this hypothesis to see if the data supports it!

Here we see the fine amounts and reduction amounts for Manhattan by Passenger and Commercial types. (As an aside, the graphs here are from the visualization tools on the NYC Open Data website, as AWS was being too buggy. Therefore, these graphs are on the full dataset, not just on our sample.) Note how passenger vehicles own a much larger share of fines, yet commercial vehicles suddenly have more reductions! Now let’s compare this to Brooklyn.

Wow, that’s quite a stark contrast! Brooklyn trucks hold a much smaller share of Brooklyn fines than Manhattan trucks do from Manhattan fines. So even when the trucks in Brooklyn receive their predictable break, it would be on a much smaller share of the fines, with a overall smaller impact!

We were correct in our hypothesis that the difference in fines and payments for Manhattan drivers is commercial vehicles’ larger share in tickets. Since trucks proportionally receive more tickets in Manhattan than in the other boroughs, the reductions that are common with commercial vehicles make a larger difference in Manhattan’s bottom line.

As a final insight, let’s examine the differences in violations between Manhattan and overall. We’d expect to see more tickets that would be appropriate for trucks.

For overall NYC violations, the number one ticket is the dreaded “School Zone” camera speeding ticket. The number three is also a crowd favorite, alternate side parking.

Manhattan violations tell an entirely different story. The single biggest contributor to the total fines is No Standing, along with another No Standing alternative as the number five violation as well. That certainly confirms our narrative of trucks being central to the Manhattan ticket story.

So where does this leave us? With a lot of tickets, a lot of aggravation, and not much good being brought to everyday New Yorkers’ lives. Orange envelopes should not be a game. They affect lower-income homes much more significantly. They are a huge cause of stress and anger for New Yorkers. They are leeching police resources and spending our tax dollars on ticket-and-reduce games.

We have a new Mayor of New York City. Mr. Adams, end this madness: bring down the speed cameras, end the orange envelope game, and separate revenue from safety. Tickets should encourage a safer New York, not be a source of revenue.