Bobby Westbrook Jr. enjoyed driving for Uber.

He liked the work, the money and the people he got to meet. But $4,000 in parking tickets, fees and interest cost him a vehicle, and then his ability to drive.

“How do they expect me to pay, if you take away my ability to make money?” Westbrook told Southland Marquee.

He was driving eight to 10 hours a day, making up to $300. It was a job he liked, did well and planned to continue. But then the accrued parking tickets, along with additional costs, forced him to pull over.

“It accumulated over a period of years, of course,” Westbrook said. “It started when I was young, I was living with my ex-girlfriend, my girlfriend at the time. She was getting tickets in my car. I did not know she was getting tickets. Plus, some of the debt is mine, too. It just happened to catch up with me.

“And now here I am,” he said. “I can't work because, like I say, they deactivate you because of parking or any type of city debt.”

Westbrook said the city adds on late fees. “They doubled and sometimes they even triple, and they can add penalties, making it impossible for you to pay,” he said.

It happened to him before, when the city impounded his car, a 2006 Chevrolet Impala. It was sold and the proceeds barely dented his debt to the city, Westbrook said.

He said it was kept in storage, and the amount grew to such a degree that he was unable to get it back, since the city required him to pay it all upfront.

“I couldn’t afford to get it back,” Westbrook said.

According to ProPublica Illinois, Chicago issues more than 3 million tickets each year for a wide range of parking, vehicle compliance and automated traffic camera violations. The average cost of these tickets ranges from $25 for broken headlights to $250 for parking in a disabled zone.

In 2007, approximately 1,000 Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings were made due to unpaid tickets, with the average debt to the city being $1,500. Last year, there were over 10,000 Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings with an average debt of approximately $3,900. The city of Chicago has increased the cost of ticket fines and license suspensions, and expanded its traffic camera program since 2007.

Westbrook, 46, drove for Uber for six years, he said. Ride-hailing service drivers are often willing to go into neighborhoods where cabs and taxis won’t, he said.

The city stripped him of the ability to continue to do it late this summer. Since then, he has been driving for Grubhub, DoorDash and other gigs, but it doesn’t come close to matching the income he has lost. He owns a home in the south suburbs and is trying to hold on to it, Westbrook said.

“It is very hard, especially when you have a three-bedroom house you care by yourself,” he said. “So yes, it seems nearly impossible and seems like bankruptcy is the only way out and I'm trying to avoid it.”

Chicago motorists currently owe $1.45 billion in ticket debt dating back to September 1990, according to ProPublica Illinois. The city sends multiple notices to vehicle owners to give them time to pay or contest tickets before fines double, get sent to collections, or cause a vehicle to be booted. In Illinois, there is no statute of limitations for unpaid tickets, so once debt accumulates, it can last indefinitely. ProPublica Illinois said that in other major cities with statutes of limitations, ticket debt is much lower.

For example, in Los Angeles, where the statute of limitations is five years, ticket debt totals $21 million, and in New York City, with a statute of limitations of eight years, it is approximately $238 million.

According to Flexible Work News, the city of Chicago is the only major U.S. city with a program that deactivates gig-workers, primarily ride-hailing drivers, for their unpaid ticket debts.

NPR reported that in 2019 alone, the city suspended the licenses of approximately 15,500 Chicago Lyft and Uber drivers who in turn lost their ability to work in ride-hail services. A 2019 WBEZ analysis of data obtained through public record requests proves Chicago's ride-hail suspensions have hit the city's majority black and low-income neighborhoods the hardest.

“It seems like it,” Westbrook said.

Black neighborhoods account for 40% of all debt, though they account for only 22% of all the tickets issued in the city over the past decade — suggesting how the debt burdens the poor. The city of Chicago not only has the ability to boot and impound vehicles, but it can also move to suspend drivers' licenses after an accumulation of 10 unpaid parking tickets or five unpaid traffic camera tickets. In 2016, Chicago asked the state to suspend licenses of more than 21,000 drivers, triple that of 2010, ProPublica Illinois reports, according to the city’s finance department.

Westbrook said he and nine other suspended drivers met with Uber officials, including CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. He said the drivers were told Uber is willing to meet with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and other city officials to try to get more drivers back to work.

Westbrook said if he met with the mayor or some aldermen, he would ask them to consider the consequences of their decisions. Lightfoot announced the Clear Path Relief (CPR) Pilot program and the Fix-It Defense for compliance tickets, on April 14. But Westbrook said it doesn’t offer relief for him or other ride-hail drivers.

“I would tell them: How do you expect me to pay my debt, my parking tickets, if you take away my ability to make money?” he said.

Westbrook just wants to return to his job.

“I love it,” he said. “I would do anything to get back at it right now. At this point, I miss it.”