Yet Another Parking Issue

[xuth.livejournal.com]

This morning while bicycling to work, I asked a parking enforcement officer why he wasn't ticketing people parked 5 feet away from the curb. He told me that with the snow storm he was told to not ticket for it. I find this to be absurd for the reasons that I'll enumerate behind the cut but I wanted to see what other thought about this before I started complaining to Somerville and Cambridge directly about it.

It's been over two weeks since we've had any significant snow fall and apparently it's still ok? There are many cars that I see parked in the same spot every day 5 feet from the curb.
Why is overstaying a meter or not having a permit more important than actual safety issues? It means that there is no extra space for cars or trucks to maneuver past each other in opposite lanes and in some places buses can't pass each other without stopping to let the other pass. It means that pedestrians can't look around cars because the cars are forced to pass the parked car so closely (the parking enforcement officer offered without my mention of this aspect that he had almost been hit that morning because of this problem). As a cyclist I have to make the choice of riding dangerously close to parked cars and weave in and out of traffic to get around these cars or just ride down the middle of the lane disrupting auto traffic. I personally choose the latter because it's safer, it just doesn't win me any friends.
This isn't a problem in Davis Square business district proper, because all of the snow was cleared from there. But just about anywhere else in the area, it's a real hazard.
Really I should be complaining about this in the summer too, because there doesn't seem to be much enforcement of this even then. My only cycling accident in recent years was when I was doored by the driver of an SUV parked about three feet from the curb and Somerville police thought so highly of it that they refused to accept an accident report from me when I went to the police station to report it.

Comments

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

I used to be a pretty aggro biker back in college, and enjoyed some winter road biking that nearly killed me on several occaisions, so I can understand your trepidation. However, I think some clemency is justified in this situation. It's just too hard to measure (and by extension, to enforce) a reasonable parking distance with snow still iced up as much as a foot from the curb.

[xuth.livejournal.com]

My point is that there are cars that are literally 5 feet from the curb. There aren't many that are that bad but on Mass Ave and Beacon/Hampshire (my daily commute) there are several per block parked no less than three feet out. Since Beacon / Hampshire is only 44 feet wide, the full size pickup truck parked five feet from the curb that I pointed out to the parking officer forces large vehicles to cross the center line to pass it (even three feet out makes things tight and there is certainly no space for even a small car to pass a cyclist safely once that couple feet has been taken). I would think that 5 feet would be pretty obvious especially when other people have cleared the areas where they park all the way to the curb.