Atlanta to begin street booting for illegal parking

By Ernie Suggs

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Parking scofflaws, your time is up.

Starting Friday, the city of Atlanta will begin booting and towing illegally parked cars in public rights of way.

In a measure designed to target violators with a minimum of three outstanding parking tickets, the Atlanta City Council’s transportation committee approved an ordinance in July that would allow police officers to boot cars parked on public streets if they have multiple violations.

Drivers will also have to pay $50 a day to remove the boot.

Commonly, the city allowed booting of vehicles on private property by city-licensed companies.

The new law is part of an overall plan called PARKatlanta that also calls for meter installation and maintenance, meter revenue collection, electronic processing of ticketing and payments, and delinquent collections.

In November, PARKatlanta began sending out notices to registered drivers who have “boot eligible status.” The notice was in addition to prior warnings sent to drivers regarding each specific parking violation and how much they owed in fines.