The NYT reports there is a serious "parking rage" problem in the city that gave the world Rice-a-roni as a treat. And that rage is playing out with attacks on parking control officers (surprise, surprise).
It bears the hallmarks of a classic urban scourge: back-channel sales, assaults on enforcement officials and even death.
It is the price of parking in San Francisco.
Burdened with one of the densest downtowns in the country and a Californian love for moving vehicles, San Franciscans have been shocked in recent months by crimes related to finding places to park, including an attack in September in which a young man was killed trying to defend a spot he had found.
More recently, the victims have been parking control officers -- do not call them meter maids -- who suffered four attacks in late November, and two officers went to a hospital.
Over all, 2006 was a dangerous year for those hardy souls handing out tickets here, with 28 attacks, up from 17 in 2005.
All of which has left officials in this otherwise civilized community scrambling to explain, and solve, “parking rage.”
“It’s hard for me to understand people reacting in such a hostile manner,” said Nathaniel P. Ford Sr., executive director of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees parking. “Clearly, this is a working person simply doing their job. I’ve gotten parking tickets, and I sort of slap myself on the wrist and pay the ticket.”
People in the field say abuse is common, often frightening and, occasionally, humiliating. In November, an officer was spat on, another was punched through the window of his Geo Metro, and an irate illegal parker smashed the windshield of another officer’s golf-cart-like vehicle.
Mr. Ford, do your people just "doing their job(s)" have quotas? Do they have the right to exercise judgment and not issue a ticket for a violation when there's a good reason for doing so? Does the city of San Francisco treat parking violations as a cash cow?
Another excerpt from the story:
“They think they can take out their frustration on government in general” by abusing the officers, who work 40-hour weeks for about $40,000 a year,” (Preston) said, adding, “They say, ‘I’m tired of the city taking my money.’ ”
There certainly is money in parking tickets. San Francisco issues 1.9 million parking citations and brings in more than $40 million a year from violators, according to the transportation agency.
I haven't owned a vehicle in more than four years, but I can remember getting some of the stupidest tickets back when I did. I got slapped with one for being in a no-parking zone. You know why? Because my back bumper was a few inches into the no parking zone that started just west of a sign in the Beaches on Queen St. East.
A technical violation of the law? Perhaps. But since those few inches over wouldn't affect any other driver or traffic flow, why not let it slide unless the whole reason is to use such tickets as a revenue grab?
Would it have been a better solution to have five millimetres of separation between the front bumper of my vehicle and the rear one of the vehicle in front of me?
Here's another thing: In my area of T.O., the College Street strip supports a lively restaurant/nightlife scene. Those places serve alcohol until 2 a.m. and close (if they wish) at 3 a.m.
However, after midnight, on-street parking is only for residents with a permit. Does anyone see the vast revenue potential there?
Now, you could say, "take a cab" or "take the bus" and avoid the problem. But why not have the permits kick after even 2 a.m.? Why not have metered parking for non-residents who are night owls?
Anyways, back to San Fran's problems. One policy guru noted that San Fran is too dense to drive easily but not dense enough to support great public transit:
That opinion was seconded by Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, widely considered something of a parking theory guru. (His fans are called Shoupistas.)
Professor Shoup said the chronic lack of parking here was a result of a decision to encourage a bustling downtown free of atmosphere-killing parking lots, a phenomenon echoed in other parking-challenged — and popular — cities like Boston, Chicago and New York.
“Whenever someone from San Francisco calls to whine about the fact there’s no parking,” he said, “I always say, ‘Well, you have to choose, do you want to be more like San Francisco or more like L.A.?’ And that usually ends the conversation.”
That said, Professor Shoup noted that San Francisco had some questionable parking policies, namely cheap on-street parking and expensive garages and lots, a dynamic that encourages drivers to look endlessly for meters rather than pay for the privilege of parking off the street.
“A lot of the traffic in downtown San Francisco is people looking for curb parking,” he said. “And they’re apparently so fed up that they’re willing to assault parking officers to protest the idea of shortage of spaces.”
Or maybe they're fed up with arrogant and pig-headed enforcement of the rules.