Street cleaning

[lunarbull.livejournal.com]

Did anyone else mess up and get ticketed today like I did? I'm not sure if the street cleaning schedule is the same throughout Davis or not, but on Liberty, it's every 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month for one side and 2nd and 4th Wednesday for the other. Yesterday was the third Tuesday, so I was cautious to park on the proper side. I'm thinking there's nothing to worry about until next week. However, that's wrong. The month started on a Wednesday and ends on a Tuesday, so technically today was the fourth Wednesday. Both myself and my S.O. who was staying over got ticketed. I'm paying for both, so I'm out $100 and feel like bitching about it. :P I guess this means there's no street cleaning at all next week?

Comments

[ron_newman]

Today isn't "technically" the fourth Wednesday, it is the fourth Wednesday. This happens all over Somerville, in various neighborhoods and various months.

[lunarbull.livejournal.com]

I've been mindful of the parking situation ever since I moved to my current location earlier this year, but this is the first month (that I know of) that has had a peculiar date situation like this.

[ron_newman]

It will happen two or three times a year, no matter what street you are on.

[tastyanagram.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. Fourth Wednesday is fourth Wednesday. My boy got ticketed too. :-(

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

In the words of my old neighbor for these types street cleaning weeks, "Today is a very tricky week."

[dreamgirly19.livejournal.com]

Yea today is the 4th wednesday...it happens a few times when the months have 5 weeks instead of 4.

[emcicle.livejournal.com]

that stinks! every so often we get caught like that over here in cambridge. At least they didn't tow as well. on our street, they ticket and tow, which is a huge pain in the ass in both expense and time it takes to get down to lechmere to get the car.

[lunarbull.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely grateful there's no towing involved! Ugh, that would suck...

[cutieperson]

yup, it happens that way occasionally.
the bostonsweeper emails tend to be fairly reliable reminders.

[lunarbull.livejournal.com]

What a brilliant idea! Thanks for the heads-up, I joined.

[cutieperson]

welcome :)

course, you have to pay attention and not gloss over it since you saw an email the day before. cause if you do that you still find a ticket in the morning like my husband did today :/

[cosinezero.livejournal.com]

bostonsweeper actually saved me this month. Every week was screwed up; but the second week of the month actually had 2 street sweepings since it was the 1st tuesday and 2nd wednesday, in the same week. If you moved your car for tuesday you had to move it the next day.

[ifotismeni]

holy crap, what an awesome resource! thank you!

[ad-lib.livejournal.com]

gay.

[lunarbull.livejournal.com]

SUCK IT DECK

[ad-lib.livejournal.com]

'buse.

[phillygil.livejournal.com]

All these crazy betches up in here...

[lunarbull.livejournal.com]

PHILLAY

Pay my ticket! This watch is strangling my hand.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

When I used to park on street, I used boston.com's street-sweeping notification service (http://bostonsweeper.boston.com/). I remember it being annoying somehow (something weird about the mail format that my mail client didn't like, IIRC — but I was still using a very old-school mail client then, and you probably aren't), but the mail arrived a reasonable amount of time for me to make sure I didn't get towed.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

I swear when I started writing that, no-one had yet commented on the original post....

[tut21.livejournal.com]

Yep, last week was free of street cleaning due to a quirk on the calendar. This week contains both the third Tuesday and fourth Wednesday of the month so people living on Tuesday/Wednesday streets had to move our cars twice. In the example above this will happen in any month that begins on a Wednesday.

I got nailed for a $50 street cleaning ticket this morning due to my own forgetfulness. I transposed the days my street is cleaned (Wednesday on the left, Tuesday on the right) and dutifully moved my car to the *wrong* side of the street last night. I suppose I narrowly avoided a second $50 fine by driving into work yesterday.

So I feel your pain. Somerville's plethora of parking fines are still excessive, IMHO.

[fraterrisus]

I transposed the days my street is cleaned (Wednesday on the left, Tuesday on the right) and dutifully moved my car to the *wrong* side of the street last night.

i totally did exactly the same thing last week. $50 oopsie.

[tut21.livejournal.com]

I've been told that some local mailing lists fail to alert people in time. An alarm set on my cell phone for 11pm the night before the street cleaning deadline usually does the trick for me.

[nomirena.livejournal.com]

oh my god! This is the identical situation I found myself in April, I think. I was so mad! I was SURE I was right in thinking they wouldn't do street cleaning two days in a row despite it being 3rd and 4th days of the month back to back. Anyway, they ticketed me and I wrote in, explaining my brilliant logic and they didn't give a crap. They just sent it back and said "you still owe us $50." I was PISSED! I feel your pain and I was also completely confounded. You are not alone.

[lissie930.livejournal.com]

My neighborhood is Monday (2nd/4th) and Friday (1st/3rd), so this happens all the time for us. *shrug* Are you on Boston Sweeper? http://bostonsweeper.boston.com/ They email you when it's street cleaning on your street.

[lunarbull.livejournal.com]

I didn't know tjat sote existed until I made this post. Now I'm glad something productive came of it!

$50 is too much

[jwinter.livejournal.com]

The fifty dollar fine is way too steep. And you get fined even if you didn't disturb street-sweeping (I forgot and parked for 45 minutes on the wrong side and got ticketed last month).

Re: $50 is too much

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

I often see the sweeper on our street sweeping the wrong side of the street entirely (as in, he bobs in and out of parked cars on the incorrect side, despite the correct side being totally free of cars). This morning, he was speeding down the middle of the street and basically swept nothing at all.

It's a conspiracy, I tell you!!!

(Yes, I am shaking my fist in the air!!)

Re: $50 is too much

[mattdm.livejournal.com]

Sell yer car, man!

Re: $50 is too much

[jwinter.livejournal.com]

When the Red Line is extended from Somerville to Mount Laurel, NJ; I will push my car into the Mystic River and not look back.

[pushupstairs.livejournal.com]

I put all of the street cleaning days into iCal and have it set off an alarm the afternoon before. I did this after an instance earlier this year where the first friday (my 'hood is 1/3 fri and 2/4 mon) of the month was the first day of the month so I didn't even have time to mentally recognize when the first friday was.

and yes, $50 is an utterly ricockulous sum for a street cleaning fine

near Davis

[piscesboy311.livejournal.com]

God I've gotten so many tickets in Somerville it's not funny. I thought Cambridge was bad but Somerville is way worse.

Where is Liberty? suzybuzz and I are gearing up to our move on the 30th to Willow Ave not far from Davis but the part of Willow that is closer to Ball Square. So many lj folks living so class-shaxxon will be our neighbors-are you close to them? Suz may have told you that we'll have to cats in our home.

Re: near Davis

[lunarbull.livejournal.com]

I know where Shannon & Russ moved to, it's not far from me. Neither is Willow. My street actually connects to Willow, but I'm on the opposite side. I'm on the corner of Liberty Ave & Foskett Street.

Cool

[piscesboy311.livejournal.com]

What a great neighborhood. I am glad we are close to Ball Square. I just checked out True Grounds today for the first time-what a sweet coffeehouse. I like Sound Bites also as well as that old school bakery-Lydell's I think it is?

[inkscarred.livejournal.com]

I made the exact same mistake.

[tt02144.livejournal.com]

I swear by Boston.com's 'Streetsweeper' e-mail alerts. I get an e-mail the day before street sweeping. And you can even enter multiple streets and/or cities. So if you live on Willow Ave but work on Glen Street, you can get an alert for each address. Or even if you live in Somerville but work in Cambridge or Boston, you can get alerts for both addresses. Another thing I do (besides praying for the end of 'street sweeping season') is, if I'm parking on a Tuesday night, I try to park on the side of the street that does not have street sweeping on a wednesday. Even if it's the wrong week, I'm still safe!

[cranbonite.livejournal.com]

Somerville is really *nasty* with tickets.

I miscalculated yesterday as the 3rd Wednesday, of course. And it's funny, because the car's not even mine, and I live in Cambridge (near Davis though) - my boyfriend is on a business trip for two weeks, and since I'm moving at the end of the month he said I could use the car during these two weeks as long as I made sure I moved it regularly (because apparently this stupid parking authority also nails you if you leave a car in the same spot for over 48 hours...!) I really didn't need a $50 parking ticket when I'm about to move. I actually thought about putting it on the other side of the street, but wouldn't ya know there was no space for it, and not knowing the neighborhood parking situation too well, I didn't want to park it off his block.

SO STUPID. And annoying.

[wallacestreet.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it's not just street sweeping. There's also the 48 hour rule, 2 days/week with a visitor permit which is a pain in the ass for out of town guests, and my favorite, the 20 ft from an intersection rule they've just started enforcing near my house (corner of Park and Wallace). We got stung twice since it seemed so improbable: it's a totally normal parking spot with no danger to turning cars since it's two one-way streets and no sign or anything. There's almost always a car there and now it often has a ticket to show for it.

It could be worse though. Although Cambridge doesn't ticket nearly as assiduously as Somerville, they tow much more readily, as noted above. If you forget street sweeping in Cambridge, you get to trudge over to the impound lot and pay your $25 ticket (or whatever) plus the $75 towing fee (or whatever). Now THAT sucks.

[maelithil.livejournal.com]

I remembered the month was weird around 2 am this morning, and managed to get my boyfriend to move his car before the street cleaning. That was lucky, we really didn't need another ticket.

[reverend-jim.livejournal.com]

I fully support all the hating on the $50 fine, but ever since I went downtown for a late-night drink in Kenmore a few years back and got my ass *towed* for street cleaning, I'm a little less bitchy about the tickets. I also use the boston.com e-mail service, which is awesome because I've been street cleaning ticket free for at least 2 or 3 seasons now. Somerville has "benefited" from thousands of my dollars already, they'll not get another dime!

[righteousness-1.livejournal.com]

I hate the ticketing as much as everyone but I have to admit to a little sense of joy whenever someone from other parts of the city who park all day on our street so they can get the T to work get a ticket.
Sweet!

[alexdw.livejournal.com]

I don't know why they even bother with ticketing/towing. It's not as if the street sweeping was particularly effective anyway. I watch them just go by, and the road is the same after as before! The same with the sidewalk cleaning -- just a waste of time and effort, IMHO.