PT's Parking Blog

Atlanta On Street Enforcement “Illegal”

Here's the drift – Atlanta hired a private firm to enforce its on street parking regulations. The firm uses "non police" personnel to write citations. Now some legal eagle in the Peachtree city is trying to say that all tickets written are illegal since they were written by "private citizens" and not by "sworn police." Read all about it here. The city is considering stopping all enforcement until they can sort it out.

Oh Please….Citations are written daily in municipalities across the fruited plain. You can get "written up" for leaving your garbage cans out too long, for not mowing your lawn, for building something without a permit, and in every case, a policeman was not involved. All these nincompoops are doing is costing the city time and money. OK maybe the legalese needs to be cleaned up a bit, but certainly the concept of non sworn officers writing parking tickets is not something that is rubbing up against the constitution.

In the UK, and I'm sure in most of the US, parking violations are considered "non criminal" acts, and therefore don't need a policeman involved. This entire conversation is absurd.

JVH

Problem in Northumberland

For those of you who don't frequent the English Countryside, a "housing estate" is a poorly designed area of duplexes and fourplexes built cheek by jowl on narrow curving streets. It's like a typical housing tract in the US but with streets half as wide and twice as many houses on the same amount of space. If we built something like this here, they would be apartment houses or townhomes with green belts, parks, and lots of parking. What has happened in this case is that people are parking on both sides of the street and when they do, it's almost impossible for cars, trucks, or buses to fit down the street. Oh, did I mention that each living unit has a garage, usually one car. In this article the local traffic guru has basically thrown his hands in the air and said "There is nothing we can do." People want to park in front of their houses and that's that.

As I'm sure you expected, you humble servant has a possible solution. Issue one parking permit for each housing unit. If a car has that permit they can park on the street. It is free. The second permit can be purchased but its £150 a month. Outrageous, you say. Nope – See virtually none of the residents is using their garages for what they were intended. They are full of storage and junk. There is a perfectly good self storage complex just down the road and for £75 a month they can rent a unit and put all their treasures there. Then they can park their car in a garage thus taking half the cars off the street. If you want to become very draconian, you can restrict parking to one side of the street.

It seems to me that if a family can afford two or three cars, they can afford to pay to park at least one or two of them. My guess is that if money were involved, some entrepreneur would set up a parking facility nearby where people could rent spaces for their cars and walk the three blocks to their house. However as long as the local government sees fit to subsidize parking by allowing residents and visitors to park for free, none of this will happen and yes, "there is nothing they can do."

JVH

Traffic Life

I have tripped over a wonderful web site called Traffic Life and I commend it highly. It contains a series of fictional stories by a good dozen contributors ranging from "Attila the Stockbroker" to Ray Bradbury. You probably haven't heard of the former but shame on you if you don't know the latter.

I commend two stories – one by Wes Alderson called "Parking Structure Three" and another by Scott Munn "Sherlock Holmes and the Stolen Bicycle." Parking Structure Three is a surreal journey into a parking structure cum time machine and the brief sourjoun into Conan Doyle's world including email.

Be careful – if you approach Traffic Life, you may have difficultly tearing yourself away. These folks are clever.

JVH

Mourning Fallen Industry Friends

Well, the crew at Paylock has been very mysterious about their booth at the IPI this year. In the past they have had many intriguing themes, including hanging "t" shirts above their booth so it looked like a tenement in New York in the 1920s. They have dropped some information on me but suffice it to say that word on the street is that the PayLock guys will be mourning one of the industries fallen friends at IPI this year. You may want to stop by and pay your respects.

I have some ideas but don't want to spoil the "fun." See you in Vegas

JVH

An International Parking Jam Up

Its shaping up to be an exciting fall for Parking around the world. In the three weeks beginning September 28, there are major parking events in New Zealand, Canada, Brasil, Abu Dhabi, and Boston. In order, the New Zealand Parking Association is holding its annual meeting, The Canadian Parking Association is gathering in Whistler, BC, Expo Urbano, the largest urban exhibition in South America including parking will be underway in Rio, The Third Middle East Parking Symposium is slated for Abu Dhabi, and of course the National Parking Association has its Show of Shows in Boston. If you want the exact dates, go to our web site.

Why should I care, you say? I'm a Canadian and heading for British Columbia, there's no conflict. Fair enough. However what if you were the Marketing Director for Skidata, Scheidt and Bachmann, Digital Payment Technologies, Parkeon, Metric, Zeag or any one of a couple of dozen other international companies that literally pay the freight for these organizations. Where are you going to send your resources? Which event do you personally attend? Do you turn your back on the Canadians, or an entire continent in South America. What about your dealer/representatives in Dubai or Saudi? Are you going to support them?

The problem is always the same. Planners for trade events look at their region and say "whoppie" nothing is going on in Canada (or New Zealand or the US, or Brasil) in October, so it's a perfect time to hold our meeting. They don't look beyond their borders.

Major suppliers, and speakers, for that matter, have to plan their lives differently. If a revenue control manufacturer, for instance, wants to show their products at each of these events, that means they have to have five demonstrations units, five booth set ups, five teams of personnel to support the local folks on the ground. Of course they don't. So they must make decisions. Where will be put our resources? Who is more important to our market? Which group brings us the best bang for or Buck, Euro, or Real? I can just hear someone say "Hell, we just spend a fortune in Vegas at the IPI, let's pull back on our booth at the NPA and CPA, and expand our market reach in the Middle East, or South America." This costs the local organizations money, and makes for a smaller event. Not good.

There is another issue == Parking is a relatively small industry with a relatively small number of experts to speak on major parking issues. Having events scheduled simultaneously means fewer resources to present, teach, and bring information to these events.

What's the solution? The world is getting smaller and smaller. Companies want to reach out to more and more markets with fewer and fewer resources. Timing of these events is critical. We have a solution – stay tuned – watch this blog.

JVH

Face book a good thing for business sites?

We are spending a lot of time working on social networking sites. Here is our Facebook site. Its new but we are growing. Become a "fan" and you can follow the blog entries there and also on your site if you so elect. I am finding that people who read Facebook are more likely to comment than those who read the blog. It is apparently easier and quicker.

When I blog here, the blog automatically appears on Facebook so we get double the exposure. Not a bad thing, I guess. I know, most of you know all about this. Its new to me. Just think – If John McCain could have gotten his arms around Facebook, maybe he would be president.

Now I can communicate with my 17 year old granddaughter.

JVH

Does Extending Meter Times solve parking problems?

St. Paul, MN, has a problem – the people who come downtown are getting tickets and they don't like it. There also appears to be a dearth of spaces at certain times and more than half the people who come downtown (although fewer customers than merchants) believe there is a parking issue. Read about it here.

The city is considering throwing technology at the problem (credit card meters, pay and display, better signage, etc). I agree that it could help. Howev, what is the real problem? It would seem to me that St. Paul would do better to look at their entire parking situation. Do they have plenty of off street parking but not enough on street parking? Are merchants and their employees taking up convenient on street spaces? How long do the average customers stay during the day, and how long in the evenings (when restaurants and clubs are open?) Once you know the answer to those questions, you can look to technology to help apply new rules to your parking operations.

As usual, I will posit – the rates are too low at certain times in the on street spaces, or too high in the off street lots. Using a "Goldilocks" approach to pricing (not too low, not too high, but just right) would solve the parking issues and keep the customers and merchants happy. Just Saying…

Hat Tip: Greg Leean

JVH

Time for the Cops in Buffalo to Get a Life

According to the local press, the folks who enforce parking rules in this upstate New York city have been writing citations on police officer's private vehicles that are parked illegally near the police station. In retaliation, the police are writing tickets to the enforcement officers, now get this, for not buckling their seat belts when they drive their enforcement vehicles. As we all know – parking enforcement cops often drive those little glorified golf carts and have to get in and out of them every few feet to perform their duties. Naturally they don't click their belts every time they get in. It's a "gotcha" moment.

The city issued a memo to the police stating that the enforcement vehicles were "emergency" vehicles and therefore didn't fall under the state rules for seat belts. Not so, it seems – the state rules don't specifically include Parking Enforcement Vehicles.

Correspondent Mark says that this story is "just too funny.  Ridiculous and sad, but still funny.  I have all these images in my mind of Parking Enforcement and Police lying in wait and jumping out in an ambush style attack."

We have seen this problem in many cities, where one part of the local government (Mayor, city council, police, teachers,) see themselves as above the rules when parking is concerned. It got so bad in New York City that the "special" permits that allowed people to park virtually anywhere had to all be recalled and new ones issued. It seemed that there were more permits issued than there were parking spaces in the city.

I see this as a "broken window" issue. If you fix the broken windows in a neighborhood, the chances are that the incidence of graffiti will be less, and then when people begin to take pride in their neighborhoods, petty crime will drop, and as petty crime drops, so also does major crime. If government officials don't feel that they need to follow the "unimportant" parking rules, then what is next? Will they start looking the other way on zoning violations, or building codes, or kickbacks? Hmmmmmm

JVH

$640 for a Parking Ticket

Here's the deal – a woman parked for a few minutes in a "yellow striped" space next to a handicapped space in front of the courthouse in Arlington TX. Read about it here. She was cited, not for parking in the handicapped space, but for "blocking" the space. You can visualize it – she parked in that spot that would be a spot except that the handicapped space is extra wide and the space next to it isn't big enough so its marked off. That space also gives the handicapped person some extra room to maneuver around their car. All this is fair enough.

Now comes the ringer – Her fine was $640. That's twice what she would pay if she was going 70 MPH in a school zone. I think we need a sense of proportion.

As you know, I'm the biggest cheerleader for the disabled. They need access and should get it. People who park in their spaces should be towed and fined. However – fining a person for parking next to a handicapped space twice what she would have been fined for endangering the lives of school children is over the top. Full Stop.

This is what happens when different divisions of government don't talk to one another. What seems "fair" to the judges issuing fines in court for speeding is inconsistent with a parking fine. Time for some consistency here.

It does tickle one's sense of irony that the person receiving the $640 ticket was running into the courthouse to pay for a $240 speeding violation.

Hat Tip: Charles DeBow

JVH

I wouldn’t expect anything else from Washington DC

According to this article the Washington DC staff that drive city cars don't pay their parking fines. At least $75,000 in fines aren't being paid. This includes the local school chancellor and the Mayor. The arrogance of those who govern us never ceases to amaze. The story notes that managers simply don't "want" to ask their staffs to pay up, so no one does. I guess when our Secretary of the Treasury doesn't pay his taxes and head of the Senate Finance committee "forgets" certain deductions, and the list of congress members that don't pay all their taxes grows and grows, how can we expect those who work in DC city government to follow the rules.

 

JVH