City taking online payments for parking tickets

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) - If you park Downtown, in Old Town around UNM or in Nob Hill parking enforcement officers are a familiar sight.

"It was five minutes after my time, and they only gave me an hour and I had a $10 ticket sitting on my windshield," said Tammy Real.

Until recently if you got a ticket the only way to pay was in person or by putting a check in the mail.

Even the city admits those options were pretty inconvenient especially since violators only have five days to settle up before the fine doubles.

"Some people are like well I would have paid this a lot sooner if there was a lot easier way to do it," Real said.

Now there is, in January the city quietly rolled out a new page on its website, payments.cabq.gov , that lets people pay their tickets online.

The city said its since coming online 880 people have taken advantage of the site to pay their tickets.

"Right now even without announcement we are seeing about 10 percent of our payments are being made online and that equates to about $21,000 in revenue for the city of Albuquerque," said Director of Municipal Development Michael Riordan.

The city told KRQE News 13 this is something it has been trying to do for many years but only recently worked out the right set up.

People on the receiving end of parking tickets are happy to see the city finally catching up with the times.

"Its much more convenient every body's online anyway, just do a click and your paid," said Real.

Riordan said they hand out about 50,000 parking tickets a year.

He said they think new online option will bring in more money for the city because more people will actually pay their tickets now that it is more convenient.