I do get a parking ticket now and then, but every one of them was because I ran into a scheduling issue and consciously decided to risk the ticket. And in every case, I could've paid more in advance to eliminate that risk.
I live in New York, and parking tickets make up right around 1% of our city's entire budget, which doesn't seem like a terribly burdensome stealth tax.
Want to pay once and subsequently "feed the meter" twice? Gonna cost 6n vs 3n if you walk back to the meter and pay in person. Want to renew again? Total cost is 10n instead of 4n.
Pretty much everything the PPA does here is direct proof they're not interested in making parking a legal matter so much as a money-extraction matter.
There are also times when avoiding tickets is basically impossible. My local (and relatively large) community college brilliantly decided to do all three of these things at the same time:
1. Close down the third largest lot on campus. 2. Lease out half of the second largest lot on campus to local businesses. 3. Oversell permits for the remaining parking.
As a result, students began parking on the city streets. But the local residents didn't like that, so the city made those streets permit only (and only gave permits to local residents)* . The college's response was "get here early," which at best is not a solution and at worse, exacerbated the problem by making parking even less available in the early parts of the day. Later they added a meager shuttle solution which they didn't even keep for an entire semester (the parking situation lasted for YEARS rather than months because of theft, lawsuit, and resident concerns about the job site).
Frankly, I would be impressed with anyone who didn't get a ticket over that time period and still managed to make it to classes.
Looking further, the local downtown simply has inadequate parking. The downtowns of other nearby municipalities are the same. It certainly makes political sense to keep parking prices low and just ticket the hell out of violators rather than raising prices to keep demand in line with supply and making consumers and businesses unhappy. I'd be very surprised if these municipalities hadn't worked out the math and figured out which results in more money for them.
*Those roads are still (and probably permanently) permit only, so the only ones really suffering are going to be the short-sighted locals.
There wasn't even a parking crisis for local residents. The homes there have multicar garages and driveways. They simply didn't like people parking on "their" street. The streets are wide and the parking space is ample.
They've effectively banned visitor parking in the entire neighborhood. And for families with teenagers and multiple cars, they've got to shuffle cars or keep permits updated for no benefit of any kind.
For example: Seaside Heights, NJ.
A few years back my mom went to the shore and parked in a metered parking area. She put in 2 hours worth of time and went to the beach. She came back 1 1/2 hours later, and the meter was expired with a ticket waiting on her car. She fought the ticket and found out that the meters were broken and running too fast, and the parking officials knew about it.. but continued to write tickets. Their justification was that "All people have to do is dispute the ticket and we will drop the charges." but how many people simply pay tickets without fighting them because of a lack of time? Scumbags.
I haven't seen any if those in ~30 years. All parking here in Sweden give you a paper reciept with the expiration time to place in your windshield.
The online app component seems to have been outsourced and thus has slightly different price structure; it also allows you to extend parking remotely.
It's implemented in Abu Dhabi city proper. I believe Dubai has the traditional ticket-based system only.
The biggest downside to our system is paying via app doesn't reflect on the meter so you see "EXPIRED" making you feel a little uncomfortable about the whole thing. I wonder if they just don't have a way in the infrastructure to update meters over the web.
In many smaller cities, however, they still have old meters that take coins and have a timer. There is really no incentive for small towns to upgrade their infrastructure, as requiring coins probably means they will be able to write more tickets, as people increasingly carry less cash.
I've had two parking tickets in my life, in London. Once, only a few months after I got my licence, I parked for 10 mins in a bay where stopping was allowed, but not at that particular time. Fair cop. I hadn't bothered to read the sign.
The second time, I stopped in a 'loading' zone, where loading is permitted for a certain amount of time. I don't recall the amount of time, but I was within that amount of time. When I challenged the person who had written the ticket, he told me that loading was only allowed for commercial vehicles (which is untrue). I challenged the ticket by post, outlining what had happened, and including the parking attendant's inaccurate understanding of what loading bays are for. My challenge was rejected, and it didn't seem worth my time to continue the process.
NYC is constantly under construction. Signage is blocked by scaffolding, garbage, snow, you name it. I'm sure the residents on the street know exactly where you can and cannot park, but someone unfamiliar with the neighborhood is a target for excessive parking fines. This seems like a patently unfair system that is rigged against tourists and those from out of town.
Disclaimer: I live in CT.
Is it unreasonable? Well, I didn't follow the instructions. But I would argue that it's unreasonable to fail to account for the fact that people can't just drop everything and run around for half an hour trying to get in contact with a parking line. I wanted to just glue a pound coin to the seat, to be honest.
I have qualms with even digital systems too. The one in my downtown area is digital, but you still have to pre-pay for parking. Sometimes I don't know how long I'm going to be at a place, and it's ridiculous to expect people to come down from the top floor of a 6 story building just to "add more" money to a digital parking meter. Why not sign in once when you park, and sign out once when you leave, and just pay for the time you are there?
Anyway, that's my rant.