Ever come out of your house only to feel your heart fall down to your knees when you see a neon orange oblong envelope stuck on your car window or under your windshield wiper? As a Chicago driver, I’ve gotten parking tickets for any number of reasons—distance from a fireplug, flashers on in a loading zone, etc. And as a baby boomer who doesn’t drive often and tends to leave the car where it is as long as possible, the ticket danger escalates when street cleaning starts. That means now, folks. Hurray for this piece of news…
Alderman Tunney has just announced a new service to help us 44th warders avoid getting tickets. It’s called TktTxt.com, and it’s free. You sign up online, and then you get email and text alerts on your phone both the night before and on the morning of your local street cleaning. Your telephone warns you when you have to move your car! How cool is that?
I live in Lakeview, where parking is just plain nightmarish most of the time. So this is a heap of good news. When I signed up, I had the option to pick as many sections of the ward as I wanted to receive notices for—I was even able to sign up to get Cubs’ games parking restrictions! What a great way to avoid tickets.
I haven’t been able to find out yet (no response yet from the alderman’s office—and hey, where’s the phone number on that website?) whether all Chicago wards are offering this service. So if you don’t already know it, identify your ward out of the 50 in Chicago. Then contact your alderman to find out if your ward is using TKTTXT.com.
For additional insurance, look up your area’s Street Cleaning Schedule right here.
Eventually TktTxt plans to make alerts available for other driving and parking rules. Won’t it be nice to get a definite notice when it’s time to renew your city sticker, or when any of your local streets are being closed? And what about those tricky little signs tied onto trees that you can’t read from your car, warning you of temporary parking restrictions? They say things like, “No Parking from when-you-wake-up to after-you-eat-dinner on this day and that day.” If you’re a baby boomer like me and you don’t drive your car every day, you often may not see these. And those nasty fines can add up. Here's the scoop on those signs---seems some of them are enforceable with tickets, others aren't. Hurry up, TktTxt!
For more answers visit the TktTxt FAQs.
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