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The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

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Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#161

Post by philrapo »

ComteDeLaFere wrote: post #152
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to read between the lines, especially from afar, but their motivation to put a positive spin on it could also be political. The phrase "a recent, abstruse change in the parking rules" caught my eye. Maybe they are using these revelations to support an ongoing spat over said rules.

Yeah, this. NYC issues ~$500 mil in parking tickets per year. If this were a rational issue, someone would look at that and say "Wow. We must be doing something wrong, this is way too many tickets written. Are the street signs clear enough?" I'm kind of making fun, but they don't want to fix the problem because those tickets are a genuine revenue stream for the city. When the revenue from parking tickets goes down, e…

A different rational response could be to raise parking ticket prices.

I live in NYC. Parking here is so expensive that paying for a parking ticket (if you happen to get caught parking illegally) is cheaper than paying for the parking garage!

A monthly parking garage in my neighborhood (west village, manhattan) can cost $700-800. Parking on the street is not a perfect substitute, but I can get 10-12 parking tickets a month before the cost of parking illegally exceeds the cost of paying for garage space!

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#162

Post by wccrawford »

jo6gwb wrote: post #158
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to read between the lines, especially from afar, but their motivation to put a positive spin on it could also be political. The phrase "a recent, abstruse change in the parking rules" caught my eye. Maybe they are using these revelations to support an ongoing spat over said rules.

Here is the actual rule: §4-08(f)(7) Pedestrian ramps. Alongside or in a manner which obstructs a curb area which has been cut down, lowered or otherwise constructed or altered to provide access for persons with disabilities at a marked or unmarked crosswalk as defined in subdivision (b) of §4-01 of this chapter. A person may stop, stand or park a vehicle alongside or in a manner which obstructs a pedestrian ramp not…

I'm not surprised that people are having a hard time with it. What does it really say? After reading it 3 or 4 times, I was sure you made a typo. Then I realized you probably copy and pasted it, so it's not a typo.

In the end, I finally concluded that it is legal to park across a disabled access spot in the curb unless it's in a crosswalk or otherwise prohibited.

Which is contrary to common sense, IMO... But then, that's probably why they decided to codify it.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#163

Post by goldbrick »

cunac wrote: post #153
bogomipz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not difficult to pinpoint blame and there is no scapegoat. "Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct seems to have the most cars wrongly ticketed, bringing in over $100,000 in fines a year. The 77th, also in Brooklyn, comes in second:" That's not an oversight. That's a systematic abuse of the public trust. How about people that didn't know they were wrongfully ticketed and fined? How about people that couldn't take the time off…

that is one conclusion , other is that those two have the most parking spots affected by the change of the law so proportionally they made more mistakes

Way to miss the point. Different precincts having different proportions is not the issue.

Anyone that lives in NYC is well aware that, no matter what the commish says, the officers on the ground do whatever they think they can get away with. It's not at all surprising to learn that intentionally wrongful parking tickets are a huge source of revenue for the PD.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#164

Post by Grishnakh »

tn13 wrote: post #107

Whenever I visit NY I dont assume anything is legal. If someone tells me walking barefoot is illegal in NY I would believe it. After all they kill people for sharing smoke and all.

It sure seems like I hear about a lot more authoritarian nonsense like this in the east-coast (namely northeast) cities, and not nearly as much in the west-coast cities.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#165

Post by tedmiston »

taejo wrote: post #135
tedmiston wrote: post #123

How do you know that these tickets, given at locations of pedestrian ramps, were not actually due to other things... like uncommon street sweeping hours or those pesky snow parking restrictions that are so hard to keep track of. Is the reason for citation available in the data?

> But thanks to NYC’s Open Data portal, I was able to look at the most common parking spots in the City where cars were ticketed for blocking pedestrian ramps.

To clarify, I was hoping to see validation with reference to the specific citation code(s), etc.

For example, open the 2014 data link [0] included at the bottom of the post. When I run:

    Filter >
      Violation Description >
        Contains >
          ramp
There are no results.

It's possible there's a bug in the tool or that the violations are encoded using different language, but it's not something that's obvious to me.

0: https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Parking-Violat...

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#166

Post by tmaly »

ComteDeLaFere wrote: post #152
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to read between the lines, especially from afar, but their motivation to put a positive spin on it could also be political. The phrase "a recent, abstruse change in the parking rules" caught my eye. Maybe they are using these revelations to support an ongoing spat over said rules.

Yeah, this. NYC issues ~$500 mil in parking tickets per year. If this were a rational issue, someone would look at that and say "Wow. We must be doing something wrong, this is way too many tickets written. Are the street signs clear enough?" I'm kind of making fun, but they don't want to fix the problem because those tickets are a genuine revenue stream for the city. When the revenue from parking tickets goes down, e…

I have gotten better at reading signs, but I remember when I first started driving down to NYC several years back. I got a parking ticket that was for $120. I remember trying to read the sign, and I could not make heads or tails of it. Now I just end up paying for garage parking. It can be a waste of money if your there for only 2 hours, but its still better than forking out $120.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#167

Post by dexterdog »

tibbon wrote: post #159

Dozens of motorcyclists in downtown Boston recently had a problem like this. There are 12-hour motorcycle meters (25 cents an hour, woo!), but a parking cop kept issuing tickets for "Over 2 hour parking" at those meters. They assumed they were like the car meters. I challenged my stack of them, and they relented, but refused to actually write me back with how/why this was happening, and how they were upgrading their…

Refunding can be very hard if you have to write the check that you are hoping you won't have to write.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#168

Post by djrogers »

wccrawford wrote: post #162
jo6gwb wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the actual rule: §4-08(f)(7) Pedestrian ramps. Alongside or in a manner which obstructs a curb area which has been cut down, lowered or otherwise constructed or altered to provide access for persons with disabilities at a marked or unmarked crosswalk as defined in subdivision (b) of §4-01 of this chapter. A person may stop, stand or park a vehicle alongside or in a manner which obstructs a pedestrian ramp not…

I'm not surprised that people are having a hard time with it. What does it really say? After reading it 3 or 4 times, I was sure you made a typo. Then I realized you probably copy and pasted it, so it's not a typo. In the end, I finally concluded that it is legal to park across a disabled access spot in the curb unless it's in a crosswalk or otherwise prohibited. Which is contrary to common sense, IMO... But then, th…

> Which is contrary to common sense, IMO

Its not contrary to common sense - ramps are needed at crosswalks so people can cross the street. A ramp in the middle of the street, with no crosswalk around, is not needed.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#169

Post by ComteDeLaFere »

ghaff wrote: post #65
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #59

That's a shame. Parking in front of a handicapped-access ramp is a shitty thing to do even if it is legal.

It's either legal to park in a spot or not legal to park in a spot. It doesn't work and certainly doesn't scale to have spots where "maybe I shouldn't park there because I might get in someone's way even though it's a legal spot."

Yes, it scales like this -> "That's a handicappped-access point, I should park somewhere else." See? Easy.

Re: The NYPD Was Ticketing Legally Parked Cars; Open Data Put an End to It

#170

Post by djrogers »

ricardobeat wrote: post #126
ghaff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's either legal to park in a spot or not legal to park in a spot. It doesn't work and certainly doesn't scale to have spots where "maybe I shouldn't park there because I might get in someone's way even though it's a legal spot."

The article mentions that regulations recently changed to allow this, maybe the cops are just using common sense?

2009 is hardly 'recently'...
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