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When I lived in Ward 6, the only parking nightmare I had was commuters parking illegally. I could NOT drive my car anywhere if my return time was normal business hours. Every last spot on my street was snatched up by a commuter. Sure, it's illegal and they could be ticketed, but chances were that they would get 1-2 tickets a week, which was far cheaper than parking in a garage for the week. We either need to make the RPP violation fine high enough that garage parking is preferable to the average number of tickets a commuter will get in a week, or increase the number of tickets the average commuter gets in a week to the point that the math no longer works.

As far as I see it, one of the big reasons for the lack of enforcement was that it takes far more time for parking enforcement to record the car and come back in two hours and see if it's still there. In that regard, eliminating the two hours of free parking would make enforcement easier. We could couple that with "short-term" parking passes issued to every household, allowing a contractor or friend or whoever the two hours everyone used to get, or even the whole day like the parking ticket book idea above. Of course, this would only be workable in almost-exclusively residential neighborhoods, since customers need somewhere to park. For more mixed neighborhoods, I like the idea of meters that only have to be paid without an RPP. Make the time limit short (1 hour per payment max 2 hours). Then you just have to enforce the expired meters. And of course performance parking in commercial zones, to avoid shifting the problem to areas where businesses need parking turnover.

I come to this conclusion because I got plenty of tickets for being a little off on the "no parking from here to corner" sign (no, not fully in the no parking zone, though I know people do that a lot...maybe a foot or two of my car past the sign because someone else parked poorly) or parking for 20 minutes in a 15-minute zone or whatnot, infractions that don't require enforcement to come back hours later. I rarely saw commuter cars with tickets on my evening walk home (there were many cars I saw every day, morning and evening), even on days when I'd arrive home to find a ticket for being half a foot too close to the corner, a few inches too far from the curb, wheels angled toward the sidewalk, etc.

by Ms. D on Jun 26, 2012 4:23 pm • link • report