No good deed goes unpunished

[dougo]

In front of my building, there's room for five cars to park comfortably between the two driveways on either side of the building. But, since there are no parking spots marked on the street, if one car parks in the wrong spot, then there's only room for four or sometimes three cars. This drives me nuts, especially at times like last Sunday night, when I came home to find four cars and a space in the middle that was about 7/8 the size of my car. Monday morning is street-cleaning on the other side of the street, so it was more crowded than usual, and I had to go down a few blocks to find a spot.

The spot I found was on a stretch between a street and a driveway that could comfortably fit three cars, but there was a car parked in such a way that only one other would fit behind it. So, I figured I would be nice and parked close to the street corner, so that when the other car moved, there would be room for two cars in front of me. But when I got back to my car on Tuesday afternoon, I found a parking ticket! (Two, actually, one for Monday afternoon and one for Tuesday afternoon. Since it was several blocks away, I couldn't see it from my house, or I would have noticed the ticket on Monday.) Tell me if you think this looks illegal:



The citations ($40 each) were for "within 20 ft. of intersection", which is a rule I was not aware of. Twenty feet seems like a lot; I figured if I was ahead of the part where the sidewalk starts to curve toward the corner, I'd be okay. Would it be unreasonable to expect them to mark the unavailable space somehow? I would also like to be able to get email (or text or robo-call) when I get a parking ticket, but I imagine that's a bit too high-tech for them.

Comments

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

This one is highly unlikely to be successfully contested because he was clearly (to me, anyway) too close to the intersection. It could be worth trying to get them to at least reduce it down to just one ticket, though. Two tickets in barely 24 hours is pretty unreasonable. If they were so concerned about the safety issue, they could have just knocked on your door after looking up who owned the car, after all. (Which I *have* seen them do, but maybe they only do that when it's a friend-of-the-cops or something. I've never heard about it happening to anyone I know, but I witnessed it on my street.)

I also strongly agree that the city should mark parking better. My street has a similar situation where there is room for four cars if everyone parks right. On one of my first days, I made the mistake of pulling up behind an already-badly-parked vehicle, such that once they left, it looked like I was taking two spots and a neighbor left a note on my car about it.