The city of Raleigh in North Carolina made over $27,000 last year (the administrative year ending on November 30) via tickets for non-EV vehicles parked in a single EV charging spot located in the city, according to recent reports.
Impressive. (Is that the right word?) Still, you feel a bit bad for those that got the tickets. Though, perhaps it’s a mistake that they won’t make again — leading to the spot being open for those that need it, EV drivers looking to charge.
The act of a non-EV parking in a EV-charging spot — known as ICEing — is something that’s common enough that many reading this are probably quietly cheering right now. As we brought up recently in when talking about dealing with ICEers via the use of printout flyers left on their cars, the only thing that probably motivates people to change their behavior on this matter is likely money. A lesson that Raleigh was clearly already well aware of.
Said $27,000 dollars in fines were made up of about 540 tickets at $50 a pop — all via a single EV-charging spot located on downtown’s busy Fayetteville Street.
Given that the spot is marked clearly with signs, and a large 240-Volt Level 2 charging station for that matter, presumably parking there was no accident. Maybe said drivers simply thought that no one would notice?
Humorously, as noted by the Charlotte News Observer, there were actually more tickets issued to those parking in the spot than there were EVs that used the spot to recharge. Still, EV drivers clearly need somewhere to park and charge, and considering that Raleigh only has 23 public spots for EV drivers out of a total of several thousand for other vehicles, I wouldn’t consider that an issue. It’s something that’s likely to change anyways as the rate of EV adoption picks up over the next decade.
Those of you living in cities without fines for ICEing and wondering when similar policies might be rolled out in your cities, may be waiting a while — as, apparently, the driver behind the policy in Raleigh was that a city councilperson, Gaylord Bonner, complained about ICEing there.
Image Credit: Chris_in_Raliegh/Google
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