READING, Pa. – Parking in any city can be a headache. In Reading, some say it’s almost impossible to keep from getting ticketed in certain areas.

Right now, the Parking Authority is running its amnesty program, to make it easier to pay those bills that tend to pile up.

“It’s really bad, you have to fight for it,” Karen De Jesus said.

De Jesus was visiting Reading from Quakertown on Friday, but that was enough for her to learn the frustrations of parking in the city.

“You just have to literally, ‘hey, I was here waiting for it first,'” she said.

Whether you live here or just drop in for the day, parking tickets in the city of Reading can seem unavoidable.

Carlos Salguero owns Russo’s Pizzeria & Italian Restaurant on Penn Street. He says parking for his delivery trucks — and food deliverers — has long been a problem.

“Even the people coming from Door Dash, they’re scared to come in here,” he said. “Oh yeah, they come in a rush, ‘oh give me, give me the order because I cannot get a ticket.'”

Salguero says the parking problems can be bad for business.

“Fifty percent of my business went out because of the parking in the last 10 years,” he said.

And while parking garages in Reading may be gateless, it doesn’t mean they are free.

Melinda Speas, an office clerk with the Reading Parking Authority says she gets a lot of calls about that.

“People always say ‘well, there was no gate, so I thought it was free, I just drove in, just drove out,'” she said.

But the writing is on the wall: Literally, there are signs around the garage on how to pay for garage parking.

All this can lead to the bills piling up.

The Reading Parking Authority, hoping to encourage payment on the mounting bills, is now almost halfway through its latest amnesty program.

“So when they have this opportunity to save money, a lot of them jump on it,” Speas said.

If you pay your parking tickets now, your late fees are waived. If you pay in full, you get 25 percent off original fines.

And while you have to owe at least $45 worth of tickets to be eligible, it’s not so hard to get there.

“The tickets issued in the garages are 45, and the official signs no parking are 45,” Speas said. “And we get a lot; yesterday for example, there were 148 of those issued.”   

The parking authority couldn’t give 69 News the numbers, but says the program is paying off.

“People are paying their tickets off,” Speas said. “They’re taking advantage of saving that money, so it’s going very well.”

Still, many in the city still say more should be done about parking before folks are ticketed.

“It’s not enough parking,” Salguero said. “For the volume of people we have, it’s not enough parking at all.”

“It’s horrible,” De Jesus said. “There’s not enough.”

The Parking Amnesty Program is in effect until November 30.