The Municipality of Amsterdam issues one parking fine per minute
Last year, enforcers from the municipality of Amsterdam wrote a total of 525,969 parking fines. That amounts to an average of one fine per minute, despite the fact that it was a lot quieter in the capital than usual due to the corona crisis. This is evident from figures from the municipality of Amsterdam that have been requested by NH Nieuws.
All those fines yielded a total of 36 million euros. 29 million of that went to the municipal coffers, 7 million disappeared into the state coffers.
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The vast majority of fines were issued for not paying parking fees or not paying enough. No fewer than 489,200 times last year motorists were sent an additional tax assessment. Costs: 66.50 euros plus one hour of parking. In 2019, this fine was still 47.60 euros. The municipality will increase the enforcement costs.
Nearly 14,000 motorists were fined for illegally standing still on the roadway. Cost: 100 euros. And more than 4,500 motorists were fined for parking their car in a place where that is not allowed. Also for this had to be paid 100 euros.
‘Little empathy from the municipality’
Recent research by the municipal ombudsman showed that parking fines are the biggest source of irritation for Amsterdam residents. From an inventory of the 1,378 complaints received by the Amsterdam ombudsman last year, 204 complaints concerned parking.
Ombudsman Munish Ramlal believes that the municipality shows little empathy towards Amsterdammers when it comes to handling complaints. According to him, the complaint handling is poor and the municipality gets bogged down in legal nonsense instead of solution-oriented thinking: “Not thinking about how things could be better, such as even calling after three fines, instead of continuing with fines like a headless chicken.”
The municipality disputes that the ‘human measure’ is missing. According to the municipality, a team of civil servants is busy every day to deal with problems in a neat manner. In total, there were objections to 76,100 parking fines last year. 48,382 of these have been waived by the municipality.