Disregard for Parking Regulations
Amused said:
I'd be willing to bet that the number of parking tickets are largely related to overtime or not paying in the Maplewood Avenue region and that the moving violations are largely along the Springfield Avenue corridor. I have only seen a few instances of a moving violation issued along Maplewood Avenue in my almost 15 years in town.
Low hanging fruit.
ElizMcCord said:
Amused said:Low hanging fruit.
I'd be willing to bet that the number of parking tickets are largely related to overtime or not paying in the Maplewood Avenue region and that the moving violations are largely along the Springfield Avenue corridor. I have only seen a few instances of a moving violation issued along Maplewood Avenue in my almost 15 years in town.
I haven't noticed much speeding through Maplewood village and there are no stoplights. The principal moving violations are making a left into a parking space and driving the wrong way on Inwood.
I imagine the bulk of the moving violations are on streets such as Burnett Avenue and Prospect Street where speeding is common and crashes are relatively frequent.
LOST said:
I decided to do some research. The Maplewood PD writes over 700 parking tickets on average every month and approximately 250 moving violations.
That's 23 parking tickets a day. We have people driving around in a parking enforcement vehicle whose sole purpose is to write tickets and they can only manage 23 per day? Actually it's less than that because the police write some of the tickets.
Two options:
1) Get rid of the parking enforcement people - they aren't carrying their own weight.
2) Or the parking enforcement people need to write a lot more tickets. I drive through town and I typically see at least 4 or 5 violations.
There is a fine line when it comes to parking tickets. From a self righteous fist waving point of view they should let citizens write 20 per day to smite offenders. Businesses, however, don't want a town to get a reputation as a place where you will definitely get a ticket because shoppers will avoid it. The parking officers have to recognize this. They have to let some little things slide, and go after the big things or safety issues. It's not easy.
I wouldn't advocate handing out scores of tickets for parking overtime in a space, for example. But the township should be aggressively ticketing unsafe parking -- next to crosswalks, or double parking on narrow streets like Inwood.
ml1 said:
But the township should be aggressively ticketing unsafe parking -- next to crosswalks, or double parking on narrow streets like Inwood.
Situations in which the person writing the ticket has a far greater risk of getting accosted and harassed by the driver, since those cars are only there a couple of minutes. If it was me I'd also avoid that situation. People can be very aggressive and nasty when being given a perfectly justified ticket.
There's an aspect of American culture I think where the idea of beating a ticket (parking or moving) is celebrated to the point where reasonable parking restrictions are perceived as draconian.
ml1 said:
I wouldn't advocate handing out scores of tickets for parking overtime in a space, for example. But the township should be aggressively ticketing unsafe parking -- next to crosswalks, or double parking on narrow streets like Inwood.
Exactly, if someone is in a space for 3 hours instead of 2 hours that's fine. But there are tons of blatant and dangerous violations that go unaddressed.
In my experience, the overtime parking rules have been very fairly enforced. I have earned a few overtime tickets, and I can't recall one that I thought wasn't justified, or that was written on the dot of the time limit.
Ignoring drivers who park in crosswalks is another matter. If it's too much of a burden to ask officers to write tickets for scofflaw drivers because they may return and become abusive, why not passively block the crosswalks with traffic cones, as has been done in front of Kings? Cones are easy to monitor and eliminate the need for confrontation.
mrincredible said:
ml1 said:Situations in which the person writing the ticket has a far greater risk of getting accosted and harassed by the driver, since those cars are only there a couple of minutes. If it was me I'd also avoid that situation.
But the township should be aggressively ticketing unsafe parking -- next to crosswalks, or double parking on narrow streets like Inwood.
that seems like the worst possible reason for not enforcing a parking ordinance.
Perhaps we need something like a "Neighborhood Watch" to deal with this.
ml1 said:
mrincredible said:that seems like the worst possible reason for not enforcing a parking ordinance.
ml1 said:Situations in which the person writing the ticket has a far greater risk of getting accosted and harassed by the driver, since those cars are only there a couple of minutes. If it was me I'd also avoid that situation.
But the township should be aggressively ticketing unsafe parking -- next to crosswalks, or double parking on narrow streets like Inwood.
If they say "why, why" tell them that it's human nature.
I agree with you but it's the kind of thing that can manifest unconsciously.
maybe a person shouldn't go into the profession of parking enforcement if the person doesn't want to encounter people who are upset that they got a parking ticket.
It's one of the reasons why parking enforcement officers are almost always stony-faced ********. They don't need to hear your life-story, you transgressed, they will ticket. The bleeding hearts will get weeded out quickly.
I'd be willing to bet that the number of parking tickets are largely related to overtime or not paying in the Maplewood Avenue region and that the moving violations are largely along the Springfield Avenue corridor. I have only seen a few instances of a moving violation issued along Maplewood Avenue in my almost 15 years in town.