When a vehicle is booted in Seattle, the owner has 48 hours (excluding weekends) to pay their ticket debt. If they fail to pay, their vehicle is towed. Federal law allows cities and states to regulate the price of non-consensual towing, but even when capped, towing and storage fees can escalate rapidly, especially for vans and other oversize vehicles that may be used as mobile homes.

The cost of a tow in Seattle is typically $400 or more, although this varies according to the vehicle’s weight and the distance to the tow lot. According to the US Federal Reserve, 37% of Americans lack enough money to cover a $400 emergency expense. One in four consumers would have to use credit, borrow from family, sell assets, or get a loan in order to cover the unexpected cost.

According to Washington state law, tow operators must notify the registered vehicle owner when their car is towed. If the owner fails to claim their vehicle after 15 days, it is legally considered “abandoned” and can be sold by the tow company.

Towing companies sell abandoned vehicles at public auction. The vehicle owner can still owe money to the towing company if the auction proceeds don't fully cover towing and storage fees. Any surplus money from the auction belongs to the Washington State Department of Transportation, although the original vehicle owner can make a legal request to have excess funds returned to them.

Even after their car is auctioned, the original vehicle owner is still responsible for their ticket debt. The sale of the vehicle doesn't eliminate fines or fees, nor does it stop collection attempts from the city.

While it’s better to pay any parking tickets right away, people with low income may not be able to do so. In Seattle, a minimum wage worker would need to work for three hours to pay a $50 ticket. Additionally, the city’s own research confirms that tickets are issued disproportionately to low-income and minority citizens.

When parking tickets are unpaid, the original fine can snowball into a much larger debt. For example:

Seattle contracts with two debt collection agencies: Harris & Harris, a Chicago-based specialist in “government debt recovery,” and Evergreen Professional Recoveries, a minority and women-owned Washington state debt collection business.

Cities can’t afford to boot everyone with an unpaid ticket. Booting takes time and resources. In Seattle, boots are reserved for those with four or more overdue unpaid tickets.

You might be thinking that four tickets seems lenient. But Seattle, like many cities, has a 72-hour rule that can result in multiple citations:

Additionally, if you have two unpaid tickets in the city of Seattle, the state of Washington automatically places a hold on the owner’s vehicle registration. This means that owners who were unable to pay two previous parking tickets won’t be able to renew their vehicle tabs. However, parking with expired tabs quickly generates an additional parking ticket—and, after 45 days, towing.

We analyzed the records of all boots applied to vehicles in Seattle during a single calendar year: 2018. The full journey of booted citations is shown below:

For the city, the most profitable group is, of course, people who pay their entire ticket debt when booted. This group includes a substantial number of “frequent flyers”—individuals who are booted multiple times during the year.

For example, consider this Subaru Outback that was booted eight times in one year for 32 unpaid parking tickets. Presumably, this individual has the financial means to consider $3,800 in parking ticket fines an acceptable expense.

The least profitable group for the city is the 21% of all citations that are fully unpaid. The majority of these unpaid boots (74%) resulted in tows, with less than a third of all vehicles (27%) reclaimed by their owners. The city bears the expense of ticketing, booting, towing, and disposal, without taking in any revenue.

For example, consider this Honda Civic that was booted, towed, and auctioned—because the owner didn't pay a $476 ticket debt. The towing company auctioned the car for $250. Even though the owner lost their car, they still owe the original ticket fines of $476, as well as a new debt of $770 to Lincoln Towing for towing and storage.

How frequent is car loss? Of the 653 unpaid boot citations, slightly less than half (45%) resulted in loss of the vehicle at forced auction. This is 9% of all boot citations, or 297 vehicles.

Here’s the problem: the city needs to manage a mundane but nonetheless precious and limited resource: parking. The current solution—ticketing—fails when it imposes catastrophic fines on a vulnerable, low-income population.

While the city does offer low-income debtors an opportunity to work off their ticket fines via community service, minimum wage workers may not have the time or flexibility to do so. Seattle does also allow ticketed owners to ask for relief through “mitigation hearings.” However, low-income citizens often fear interaction with what they see as a punitive bureaucracy. Therefore, low-income debtors are left to deal with three predatory city partners: booting companies, towing companies, and debt collection agencies.

However, ticket fees aren’t high enough to deter high-income earners. For the wealthy, parking fines are negligible—a $145 boot might be “spare change.” This may encourage them to monopolize public space without penalty.

If tickets are the main tool the city has to regulate parking, a more equitable solution may be fines that are proportional to an individual’s ability to pay. Such a system is already in use in parts of Europe, where it is called “day fines” for being tied to a day’s worth of labor.

For example, given the current Seattle minimum wage of $19 per hour, after payroll taxes, a $50 ticket represents three hours of work. In contrast, when he was CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos’s salary was calculated at $390 per hour; his comparable fine would be $1,170.

In the US, lawmakers in Boston and New York City have proposed income-based parking ticket pilots. But this approach is still in its infancy and would need to be adopted by more metropolitan areas to ignite a wave of change in the country.