Parking Tickets
About $20 million worth of parking tickets were withdrawn by the city of Toronto. Reuters/Charles Platiau

Toronto drivers who haven’t paid their parking tickets may be in for a reprieve. The city has thrown out 880,000 unpaid tickets because it would cost too much to send through the courts, CP24 reported.

The city of Toronto made the decision to cancel the tickets -- issued from 2003 to 2012 -- after it discovered it would cost up to $23 million to pursue them through the court system -- $3 million more than the tickets' actual value, according to the Toronto Sun.

“Obviously, somebody decided to do a housecleaning after years of these files going bad and do it on my watch when this all happened before my time," Toronto Mayor John Tory told the Toronto Sun. "I'm also just ticked off at the fact that it clearly represents a failure of management and I'm not sure exactly where the failure is. I think it deserves examination by somebody like the auditor."

The 880,000 tickets account for 3 percent of the tickets issued by from 2002 to 2014. While Toronto has entirely thrown out the parking tickets, Chicago has taken a different approach.

Mayor Rahm Emmanuel Friday signed off on a six-week amnesty program that covers more than parking and speeding tickets. The Chicago Sun-Times reported the amnesty program applies to all debts owed the city -- which will be used to reduce Chicago’s debt and provide revenue to fund a pension pool worth $30 billion.

From Nov. 1 to Dec. 15, anyone with debts to the city or unpaid tickets and violations issued before 2012, will be able to pay them off without facing additional penalties, interest and back taxes. When Chicago implemented a similar program in 2002, it pulled in $8.2 million and 242,000 outstanding parking tickets were wiped off the books, the Chicago Sun-Times said.

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