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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 15 2018, @11:25AM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 15 2018, @08:42PM (1 child)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday August 15 2018, @08:42PM (#721912)

    *places parking ticket on illegally parked goat*

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @01:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @01:18AM (#721994)

    Honest, Judge... the goat *ate* the ticket!!!