sudden enforcement of over 48 hours parking rule?

[inq.livejournal.com]

went out of town for a week last week and when i got back, the car had 4 $20 tickets for being parked in one spot for over 48 hours. i've lived here a long time and never have i seen this enforced on my particular street (it's a little one-way street near davis in somerville). so, for $80 i guess i should have just driven to the airport and parked there, but i wondered if anyone else had been suprised by this arbitrary and capricious enforcement? (yes, that's the language from my letter of appeal.) also, at least one of these tickets was a mere 8 hours after the one previous, which doesn't seem to make much sense...

new parking officer, perhaps? i noticed a couple of other people on the street had a nice little ticket collection going as well...

Comments

[turil.livejournal.com]

Or it's a law that is aimed at reminding people that public streets really aren't supposed to be parking lots. But obviously that idea is passe with people nowadays, with so many people living in the city wanting to own cars.

I think it's not such a great law, since it incourages people to drive their cars. But I do wish that there was a way to encourage people to not own cars in the first place, since part of the point of an urban area is that it's easy to get around without a car. Tax rebates perhaps, for the car free, maybe?

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Ummm, well, where are we supposed to park our cars?

And while I dig your idea of utopia, we live in a city where the public transportation shuts down at a stupidly ridiculous early hour and is notoriously unreliable. And if we decide to park our car and actually use the T, we can then get punished with this ridiculous fine.

Fuck that. I live here, I pay rent, I pay my taxes- excise and registration- on my car, and there are times I have to travel for business.

It's absolutely fucking lame. One time when I was heading out on a trip I called the parking dept to see if there was any way I could register with them so I wouldn't have to worry about having my car ticketed or considered abandoned. There isn't.

It's such an easily-remedied situation, but the greedheads running this city refuse to do so. Kudos to Alderman Roche for trying to remedy this.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Utopia? Heh. Nah, I'm just looking for a return to a time when people didn't feel like they would die or suffer terribly without a car :-)

Or something like Brookline, Arlington, and Belmont, where the policy is no permanant parking allowed on the streets, and people have to pay for private parking spaces, off public land, to park their cars.

But ultimately I don't believe that punitive laws are effective. So, as I said, it would be better to find a healthy, positive solution to helping people feel happier with the various transportation options that they've got without feeling like they need a car to live.

It sounds like you have an idea for an easy remedy for this that would keep the streets free of "abandoned" and permanently parked vehicles while also not pissing of folks? What is it?

[sonofabish.livejournal.com]

Well, I work odd hours and often come home long after the T's stopped operating and 80% of the time I work in places unreachable by the T, plus I usually am dragging along 40 lbs worth of tools. So for me, I can't rely upon the T.

If government was really serious about making it so people could rely upon the T, then they need to make it run 24/7, expand routes so you can go more places both inside Boston and outside the city, and have it run reasonably on time.

I dispute your notion that public land- ummm, streets- should not be used for parking, and in fact have considered suing the town of Brookline etc for their regulations as it imposes a highly unconstitutional undue burden upon one's right to freely associate. There's no compelling public safety reason for those regs- it's just a move by the greedheads to soak the public for parking fines.

As to the abandoned vehicle thing, it's obvious if a car's been abandoned. It's pretty grubby, for starters. And if the police think a car's been abandoned, heaven forbid, but a bit of police work might be in order. Run the plate and contact the owner. Just sticking a ticket on a car doesn't tell them if a car's been stolen/etc.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Clearly, we don't share the same viewpoint... The kind of city I want to live in is probably very different than the kind you want to live in. Hopefully, we will both be able to find places to live that better suit our needs.

[komos.livejournal.com]

Does this mean you're moving, or is it just a polite way of saying, "Get the eff out of my town because I fully intend to turn Somerville into a carless Ewok village?"

[turil.livejournal.com]

It simply means that I hope we both finds ways to get our needs met, wherever we end up. I will be moving some day, I'm sure. And maybe you will too. And maybe Somerville will find a way to make us both happy in the mean time.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I understand they don't want people abandoning cars on the streets, but 48 hours is ridiculous when there isn't a snow problem. When I last owned a car, I didn't have access to a driveway or a garage, like many, many others, and I took the T or biked to work. I only needed to use the car once a week, if that; it was hardly abandoned, but under the 48 hour rule, apparently it counted as such. I guess with the street sweeping thing, that would force some people to move their cars that they might otherwise not. (Luckily, they didn't notice I rarely moved the car except after one snowstorm.)

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

If you own a car in Somerville (and I think this is true for all of MA) you have to pay excise tax to the city every year based on the value of the car. Plus just owning a car isn't cheap: if you're carless you're saving hundreds or thousands of dollars a month you can spend on other things.

I didn't own a car until I was 38 and largely relied on public transportation before that. I've got a car now and I couldn't go back: opportunities of all kinds open up if you don't have to assume that any trip of any distance will take at least one hour each way.

Boston's transportation system is great if you have plenty of time and don't want to go somewhere without a bus route. I commuted from Attleboro to Burlington MA for awhile, so I've done the long and the short haul. If I could go back in time I'd tell my past self to buy a car.

[clevernonsense.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't telling your past self not to get into a situation involving a commute from Attleboro to Burlington be a far more intelligent recommendation?

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

That Burlington job allowed me to buy my current lovely home in Somerville: that's a decision I've got no regrets about.

The reason I bought the car in the first place was to help my friends move their kids around, and I've got a job in Lexington I couldn't do without the car. Car good.

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, depending on what kind of work you are doing and what kind of jobs are available to you, long commutes are often a fact of life, especially in New England. I am very blessed now to be able to work from home (and to have a driveway space), but I spent 2 years having to drive 1+ hour every morning because that's where the job I had was. And finding gigs in Boston, it's still an hour commute on the T.

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

Boston's transportation system is great if you have plenty of time and don't want to go somewhere without a bus route.

Agreed. As much as I love public transportation, it does make it vastly more time-consuming to get around, even to places that are 10-15 minutes by car.

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

Given that, the public transport here is 10 times better than it is in Rhode Island, where I grew up. So I'm not really complaining.

[turil.livejournal.com]

But what's the hurry? I like to think of my commute time as being well spent meditative, reading, or just observing reality time :-) It's certainly better for me to spend time using the T or walking or biking than sitting in a car getting stressed out :-) But to each her own...

[dani-namaste.livejournal.com]

And to an extent I agree, but between running a business, going to networking events, doing work for my clients and marketing myself, not to mention actually spending time with my family, friends, etc, going food shopping and the like, there are MANY times when I do need the convenience of a car.

Doesn't mean I use it all the time; doesn't mean I don't do the public transport or walking whenever I can (in fact, I use it more than most), but it's just not feasible for me as a business owner and volunteer to spend 1/3 or more of my day "taking my time" getting to places I need to be.

[capsicumanuum.livejournal.com]

Spending 2+ hours a day people watching is a luxury that many people don't have. Students who are working to pay tuition, working parents, people who work two jobs to make ends meet, I could think of a dozen other examples of classes of people who simply cannot afford those 2+ hours a day.

[koloratur.livejournal.com]

Or, it's punishment for people who don't drive every single day? I use my car for grocery shopping, and for driving to gigs and auditions and my teaching job that is 50 miles outside of the city. Perhaps it's possible for some to never drive, but not for this musician. Not all things are within reach of the T or the commuter rail.

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

oh no, it's punishment for everyone. when i lived in davis, i worked in needham and drove there every day. the fact that my car was gone from 12:30am-9:30am monday through friday didn't stop me from being ticketed for the 48 violation on a saturday at 7pm. apparently 33.5 hours = 48 hours to the city of somerville if you park in the same spot when you get home from work every day (silly me, choosing the spot right in front of my house!)

[turil.livejournal.com]

That was my point exactly. The law not only makes things worse (more traffic, more pollution, more stress), but it also doesn't seem to be serving the purpose it was intended for, to remind people that the streets aren't supposed to be a private parking lot. So yeah, I think there sould be some other solution, that doesn't fail so utterly! :-)

[four-thorns.livejournal.com]

not everybody that lives in the city has a job that's t-accessible, in terms of location, timing, or both. you tell me a way to get to needham at 1 in the morning via T. i don't think i should have to not live in the city just because i need a car to get to work.

So you'd like to see better public transit?

[turil.livejournal.com]

Or maybe you wish you could find a suitable job that was closer to your home? It would be even better if you had both options, of course, so you could feel like you weren't trapped doing something you didn't like.

There was an impressively creative mayor in Brazil several years back that who was trying to solve congestion and pollution problems. One of the solutions he came up with that to start a program where people who lived in one area of the city but worked in another area of the city could easily trade jobs with people in the opposite live/work areas, so that more people could live near where they worked. I'm not sure how well that would work around Somerville, but it's an interesting proposal nonetheless. I'm looking for a job right now, and it's frustrating that the help wanted ads usually don't include a street address. Even something as simple as having a distance search function for job searching would be really helpful for folks, especially if it was accurate to a mile or less (I need to be able to walk to work, so I won't get a job more than 2-3 miles away, but I'd obviouslt prefer to find something that's less than a 1/2 mile away).

Re: So you'd like to see better public transit?

[foxalbers.livejournal.com]

Most people do not live in a fantasy world where suitable jobs grow on trees.

But hey, if there's anyone reading this board who lives in Burlington and would like to trade their job in Davis as Marketing Director of a midlevel engineering software firm for my job in Burlington as Marketing Director of a midlevel engineering software firm, I'd be more than happy to make the switch!

[laklare.livejournal.com]

This law doesn't discourage people from having cars so much as it is annoying and makes residents move their cars to a different spot every couple days. The city makes a ton of money off it and we residents all pay a small amount each. It's basically a under-the-radar Somerville resident tax. We spend our time moving cars from parking spot to parking spot to avoid further taxation. If they care about abandoned cars they should have an over-14 days violation or something on that time scale. They could raise the excise tax and cause much less unrest and inconvenience than what this law causes.

[flexagon]

But I do wish that there was a way to encourage people to not own cars in the first place, since part of the point of an urban area is that it's easy to get around without a car. Tax rebates perhaps, for the car free, maybe?

Bravo. Exactly what I wanted to say! Of course, I would say the freedom from the tremendous expense of owning a car is already better than any tax rebate they'd be likely to offer. :)

I went looking, by the way, and yes, there is a carfree community.