I just paid $150 in fines from a rash of parking tickets received in the last week, so I advance this notion with much reluctance: it's time to increase parking fines.

Boston has in place two programs designed to improve residents' quality of life. One of them is the residential parking program. If you're a resident with a car registered in Boston, you're entitled to a residential parking sticker. With it you can legally park on a street in your neighborhood. A lot of Boston's neighborhoods participate in the program, including all of the downtown neighborhoods. (Neighborhoods like West Roxbury or Hyde Park, with lower densities and that most enviable of all accoutrements — a driveway — are not part of the program.)

The second program is the posted street-cleaning program. The notion is simple. Once a week, one side of the street is swept in the morning, meaning that residents need to move their cars or risk a fine. The program runs from April through October (only recent transplants from southern climates will wonder why it is not year-round).

Back Bay is one of the few neighborhoods that has posted street sweeping. Other neighborhoods, such as the Fenway, would love to have it as well but their requests have been put off because of budget constraints.

Once quite successful, both programs are working less well these days, and the cause is obvious. Both rely on $20 fines for enforcement. The problem is that it often costs close to $20 to park legally. As a result, an increasing number of people are parking illegally.

A few examples illustrate the point. The first is drawn from the Fenway. Fans of the Red Sox drive to Fenway Park past a host of parking lot operators. Each parking lot charges $15 to $20 for the privilege of parking in small, blocked-in parking spaces a half-mile from the Park that, at game's end, will take 30 minutes to exit. So guess what? The smart fan parks on the street in a residential parking spot. The cost is the same (or even less if you don't get caught), and it's closer and more convenient. Fenway residents, on the other hand, find themselves unable to park when they come home from work.

A second example. The Transportation Department reports that compliance with posted street sweeping is down by 30 percent. At that level, the streets aren't being cleaned and the program is failing. Dick Loring, supervising traffic engineer at the Transportation Department, recounts a conversation he had with a Back Bay resident as he was out surveying Commonwealth Avenue on street sweeping day.

"Why didn't you move your car?' he asked.

"Why should I?" came the response. "No one else does and paying the ticket is easier than driving and parking in a garage."

The $20 fine for violating residential parking rules was set back in 1985. The Consumer Price Index continues its inexorable climb (albeit slower than it was in the '70s), and what once was a disincentive no longer is; now it's just the typical cost of parking.

What should we do? One strategy is to really boost the penalty and tow those who violate the rules. It would work, but it also could be the undoing of both programs. No one in City Hall — me, the Transportation Department, or the Mayor's office — wants to be on the receiving end of the screaming calls we'll get from those towed on Monday morning who then find themselves missing half a day of work.

A second strategy is to boost the fine itself — say from $20 to $35. It probably would boost compliance, freeing up additional spaces for residents and ensuring that more cars are moved on street sweeping day. But this is one of those things that government is reluctant to impose unilaterally. If residents want it, the city will do it.

So the question is: do you want it?

Let me know.