Abuse, threats and the occasional assault are just some of the occupational hazards that parking enforcement officers risk every day as they walk the streets of Canberra with their chalk in hand.
But the reality is that without enforcement, the business activity and community amenity of the city would scarcely function; school zones would be clogged, drivers with disability permits would struggle, supplies wouldn't get delivered to businesses, and haphazard, inconsiderate parking would put others at risk.
To those who run the gauntlet of the parking enforcement teams at Access Canberra, they do at the risk of fines which for some, are seen as raising revenue for the ACT government.
Access Canberra's Chris Seddon, the director in charge of the operational teams, says that parking enforcement plays its part in keeping the community safe.
A common public misapprehension is that parking enforcement officers have quotas and must write a certain number of tickets every day to keep their jobs.
"It simply doesn't happen; we don't have quotas," Mr Seddon said.
The role performed by the enforcement officers is hugely misunderstood, particularly by those who still believe that Canberra, with its burgeoning 478,000-plus population, should still enjoy the old-fashioned country town notion of motorists being able to park when and where they choose, notwithstanding medical emergencies and mechanical mishaps (which are legitimate grounds for appeal).
Such is the rapid rate of construction and the reshaping of the city, the amount of available public parking spaces are shrinking yet in the past financial year (2022-23), there were 59,266 infringements issued, 12,807 more than in the previous year.
But this is a huge decline from the pre-COVID 2020-21 financial year when Canberrans flouted the parking regulations with astonishing carelessness, racking up over 112,000 infringements and pouring $17.1 million into ACT coffers.
The latest infringements - on-the-spot and mail-outs - have generated $9.6 million in Treasury revenue, up by almost $2.2 million from the previous financial year. Parking tickets range from $132 to $625, with the costliest levied against those who park in a disabled space without a permit.
In a city where for decades ample public parking has been provided in the national capital, that sometimes creates friction which spills over into nasty one-on-one confrontations in the street.
"We've had to take people to court for some of those incidents," Mr Seddon said.
"It shouldn't happen, but it still does."
Access Canberra has around 30 authorised parking enforcement officers whose role it is to basically keep the vehicles moving on and fine the "overstayers" who thumb their nose at regulation.
With so much city construction underway, tradies are among the most common offenders so part of Access Canberra's education role is to take a proactive approach, and engage with construction companies about likely parking shortages in an attempt to head off any issues with parking on footpaths and nature strips, and overstaying on loading zones.
"Our role is to engage, educate and enforce; a big focus for us is on school zones because children are highly vulnerable; we can't have situations in school zones where people are parking where it suits them and blocking lines of sight for other drivers. It puts others at risk," Mr Seddon said.
Parking enforcement in Canberra remains a mixture of old practices and new technology.
In areas of mixed, complex parking time zones like local shops and around the inner city, there's no substitute for the foot slog; walking the rows of parked cars and chalking the tyres with the recorded time, then returning again later.
Access Canberra also uses prominently branded vans with automated number plate recognition which slow-crawl the streets on a daily patrol schedule, camera at the front scanning the registration plates of the parked vehicles.
The front camera is wi-fi linked to side and rear-mounted cameras which each half-second cross-refence the location, the zone, and other necessary details, such as displayed paid parking vouchers or permits.
The system advises them which areas need to be re-scanned and on a return run, any "overstayers" are recorded. After driving the route a second time, the two-person team then heads back to the office to validate and issue the tickets.
