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Average turnaround time for in-person parking summons hearings (minutes)
Bill, adjudicate and collect on parking summonses. — Assure that all respondents are offered convenient options for paying and challenging summonses.
Wait times for in-person parking summons hearings climbed steadily from fiscal 2022 through 2025. DOF's own reporting attributes this to a rising number of hearings combined with a shortage of administrative law judges, since the agency has struggled to recruit and retain judges in a competitive legal job market. DOF says it is actively working on strategies to hire and keep more judges.
Researched July 15, 2026 — NYC Department of Finance, Fiscal 2024 Mayor's Management Report, NYC Department of Finance, Fiscal 2025 Mayor's Management Report
* Year to date — this fiscal year isn't complete, so it's not compared against prior years in the target/trend status above.
View as table
| Fiscal year | Actual | Target |
|---|---|---|
| FY22 | 1.3 min | 25 min |
| FY23 | 3.3 min | 12 min |
| FY24 | 5.3 min | 12 min |
| FY25 | 11.2 min | 12 min |
| FY26 (YTD) | 7.5 min | 12 min |
Why this is tracked
Before 1970, contesting a parking ticket meant going through the criminal court system, which by the late 1960s was handling more than 3.2 million non-moving-violation cases annually on top of hundreds of thousands of moving-violation cases. State legislation effective July 1, 1970 shifted these cases to the newly created Parking Violations Bureau, a civil administrative tribunal where jail time is not a possible penalty. That decriminalization is why parking tickets today are billed, contested, and collected by DOF's Parking Violations Bureau rather than treated as a criminal matter.
NYC Administrative Code - Chapter 2: Parking Violations Bureau, Office of Justice Programs - Administrative Adjudication Bureau of NYS DMV
Source: Q-Matics system and manual records maintained by Administrative Law Judges in the Business Centers — via NYC Open Data: Mayor's Management Report, Agency Performance Indicators
Coverage shown: FY22–FY26, reported monthly.
Definition: Average number of minutes from the time a motorist(non-commercial vehicle driver) receives a Q-Matic ticket to the completion of the hearing by an Administrative Law Judge or the completion of a settlement conference by a clerk for those eligible motorists who opt to participate in the Parking Violations Settlement Program. (Note: The Program ended January 31, 2012.)