Fines For Illegal Parking Doubled

Double-parking, parking on the sidewalk and needlessly parking in a disabled-only spot will now get you double the fines as before.

Vísir reports that Reykjavík City Council has approved a measure that doubles all categories of parking fines. The move is not designed to generate revenue, however, but to increase the amount of available parking.

“We are not having a fund drive,” Kolbrún Jónatansdóttir, the managing director of the Reykjavik Parking Service (RPS), told reporters. “We want to reduce these violations and, at most, stop them completely. Especially when it comes to disabled parking.”

According to figures from the RPS, the number of disabled parking spots have actually gone down, from 714 to 616, between 2012 and 2013.

By the new fines, illegally parking in a disabled spot now carries a fine of 20,000 ISK. Other types of illegal parking can result in a fine of 10,000 ISK. Both of these fines are double what they were previously.

The new fines are especially relevant in connection with the driver of the jeep featured in the above photo. As reported, part of his defence for his notoriously bad parking was “it costs me less than 5,000 [ISK in fines] compared to 20,000 or so I’d pay to park legally.”