PARKING PAL, Save me from parking tickets! Parking Pal cuts through this confusion with simple, solid information to help you avoid parking tickets in New York City and to deal with them most effectively when you can't. Your friend in the parking business since 1994.

About

To Park or Not to Park?

That’s the question New York motorists have been asking themselves since the first parking meter was installed on our city streets in the early 1950s. Faced with risking a hefty fine or not parking in that open spot, what’s a motorist to do when relying on street parking?

Lou Camporeale, The Parking PalI’m Lou Camporeale, your Parking Pal, and I’ve developed the concept of ParkRight Education, to help New York drivers

        • understand their legal parking rights
        • fight unfair tickets
        • avoid tickets in the first place

Parking Pal ParkRight™ Educational Products offer New Yorkers a better and less expensive alternative to dealing with parking tickets than the old method — simply paying them by default. You have other, perfectly legal, options.

An Advocate Is Born

I got started in the “parking education and motorist rights” business informally. Back in the mid-’80s, when I was a student at Brooklyn College, I would occasionally get ticketed. Officially, I was parked in violation of regulations. But when I did a little digging, I found that said “regulations” were, in fact, non-existent. Or I might receive a ticket when parked at a broken or missing meter. Not my fault there was no mechanism for me to pay my parking fee, but there I was getting fined. It just wasn’t right.

Sure, back then parking tickets were only about $25, but as a college student, money was always scarce for me. I certainly didn’t need to give what little I had to the City…especially under false pretenses! So, I decided I wasn’t gonna take it any more. Armed with my camera, I took photos of empty sign poles and missing or broken parking meters. More often than not, when I presented such evidence that the tickets were bogus, my summons would be dismissed in court.

Then I went through formal legal training. As a paralegal researcher, I uncovered the actual laws that entitle us all to park legally and the working principles that were the basis of what I’d done earlier to get my tickets dismissed. I learned better techniques to effectively present evidence that reliably gets parking tickets dismissed. Then I had an AHA! moment:

“EVERY New York driver should know this stuff!” And The Parking Pal was born.

Now My Insider Knowledge Benefits You!

Not long after my epiphany, New York Newsday printed a front page story:

$19 Million in Parking Refunds;
PVB Looks for Overpayers.

That story ran April 18, 1994 — the same week I picked up the first Parking Pal anti-ticket placards from the printer. I knew I was on the right track. It occurred to me to combine this very public, yet hard-to-find information with my own experiences with the law. I’d put it all in one convenient, easy-to-use package that drivers could read on their lunch hours and carry in a pocket, purse or glove compartment.

So I created the Parking Pal Company, wrote and published The New York City Parking Survival Guide, and developed a full line of complementary products to help motorists be savvy Big Apple parkers. The Parking Pal is still the only motorist education firm that offers an entire line of parking survival products for those who drive and park their cars in New York City. We want to help you avoid parking tickets, and beat the ones you can’t avoid!