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from the Your-honor,-there-was-a-tree-branch-blocking-the-sign! dept.
Utilizing FOIA and some clever software Mr. Chapman quickly identifies a troubled spot for parking in Chicago and gets results!
http://mchap.io/using-foia-data-and-unix-to-halve-major-source-of-parking-tickets.html
The story relates how the author used Freedom of Information Act requests to gather raw data on parking tickets issued in Chicago. What he received was a semicolon-delimited text file containing a great number of data entry errors. The author outlines the steps taken to clean and extract data on a likely problematic parking location. Armed with this data, he visited the location and discovered very confusing signage. He reported this to the city, who rectified the signage. This led to a 50 percent decrease in the number of tickets issued for that location.
I immediately asked myself three things
1. How much more effective has that corner become?
2. Who's grumbling about the loss of revenue?
3. What would happen if more of us did this very thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @04:37PM
You have to be careful in some place for doing things not in your job description due to safety concerns, unions, liability. I went to the dmv 20 years ago and after waiting in line for two hours, was told that I had to have a card filled out and that I'd have to wait another two hours.
Thankfully, those situations have largely but not entirely gone away.