Analysis of 2018 Los Angeles Parking Tickets

Project Overview
The dashboard helps user to understand where the most tickets are being issued, what are the most frequent violations, where parking fines go, and peak violation times and months. The dataset used for this analysis is hosted by the City of Los Angeles.

Project Approach
Used Pandas in a Jupyter Notebook to create and cleanup data. Converted the data into year and segemented the data per year. Created the right date format and time format using Python/Pandas. Once dates were cleaned up and formatted, a CSV file was created for 2018. In the original dataset, coordinates were provided in ESPG California state plane format and had to be converted to decimal degree latitude and longitude for plotting. Then the tables were merged in to one master table. Used Google API to get the maps and create heat maps.

Go to Github for code
Summary Info
Total Issued Parking Tickets

1,997,938

Summary Info
Total Fine Amount

$140,372,757

Summary Info
Average Fine Amount

$70.32

Total Number of Tickets by Month
Card image cap

Total Fine Amount of Tickets by Month
Card image cap

Analysis
In 2018, the month of March had the most tickets issued and the greatest total fine amount, over $13 million. September ranked lowest in both categories, with fines of $9.9 million. There was a noticeable trend downward as the year went on, with the lower amount volumes coming at the end of the year. The city of LA runs on a fiscal year that begins in April so there was a correlation to the highest number of citations the month before.

Total Number of Tickets by Hour of Day
Card image cap

Top 5 Violations by Each Hour
Card image cap

Analysis
The first graph shows a drastic jump in issued tickets starting at 8:00 am and lasting through noon, whereafter the number of citations starts to decrease. Most of the citations were issued during the 8:00 am, 10:00 am, and noon hours. The top 5 violations for each hour were also shown in the second graph, which allows us to find some correlations between violation types and hours, for instance, "NO PARK/STREET CLEAN" violation happened most frequently around 8:00 am to 1:00 pm.
Top 20 Violations
Card image cap
Analysis
The most frequently issued tickets in Los Angeles are given for no parking/street cleaning (30 percent), expired meters (15 percent), and red zone (8 percent).
Parking Ticket Hot Zone
Card image cap

Top Agencies Collecting Parking Fines
Card image cap

Analysis
According to LADOT’s website, some of parking ticket revenue goes to state and county fees and the remainder goes to the city's general fund to pay for essential municipal services, including police and fire. There are additional distributions for fix-it citations and disabled parking violations. Based on the data, over 95% of 2018 parking fines were collected by LADOT.