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Find SF parking cops

walzr.com

91–100 of 498 posts

Re: Find SF parking cops

#91

Incredible work. I'm disappointed to see so many of the leaderboard items are street cleaning tickets. I get it - street cleaning are "easy" tickets to write in bulk, and therefore efficient ROI for PCO time, but they're not the most important violations to cite compared to safety-critical things like blocked bike lanes (which SFMTA has an official policy to completely ignore citizen reports thereof), double-parking,…

>Incredible work. I'm disappointed to see so many of the leaderboard items are street cleaning tickets. Why wouldn't it be? It's basically spawn camping or deer baiting or shooting fish in a barrel or whatever analogy you want to use.

Agreed, and it provides important revenue for transportation projects and helps keep our streets clean so I wouldn't want SFMTA to adjust that focus as-is.

I just wish we had proper (read: higher, accounting for real negative externalities and likelihood of citation) fines for other violations that pose active public safety concerns such that SFMTA would be incentivized to also focus on those and not just the "easy" ones. It would also disincentivize antisocial behavior by repeat offenders.

Re: Find SF parking cops

#92

I did a fascinating analysis of SFMTA data a few years back. They posted a public list of names and license plates [1] that they refuse to take down, despite many emails from me over the years. I found a particular license plate that belonged to a plumber with an impeccable 5 star reputation on Yelp, whose business in SF was effectively ended by street sweeping fines. He accidentally paid the same ticket twice, which…

I'm curious, how did his name being on this list significantly affect his business?

I live in a different country and I can't imagine checking the "traffic fine registry PDF on a random government website" when considering which plumber to hire.

I don't doubt that this caused him problems, I'm just trying to understand how.

Re: Find SF parking cops

#93
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only love it because you have some perverted dream of 100% enforcement of whatever your rules are. In reality automated enforcement would cause an uproar and the rules would be changed to accommodate the status quo.

> some perverted dream of 100% enforcement No illegally parked vehicles? The negative externalities of illegally parked vehicles charged to the source? I'll dream of that.

I think you’ll find this leads to infinite fine revenue and higher congestion in pretty much all cities.

Re: Find SF parking cops

#96

> $158 > 99 Grove St > 10:43 AM • Truck > Blocking bike lane Thank you, Officer 0227!

[flagged]

SF has dedicated commercial loading zones, for large deliveries. (Or, for some of the larger buildings, they just have an underground or partially underground loading dock.) For things like Uber, yes, one would need to find a parking spot, not park in an active lane of traffic¹. If either are insufficient, people are free to lobby for more, where they are needed.

(¹and as bike lanes are not wide enough to accommodate a vehicle, you're partially blocking a car lane, too.)

Re: Find SF parking cops

#97
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So is tax evasion No. “In the United States, tax evasion constitutes a crime” [1]. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/tax_evasion

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6663 Moreover: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part25/irm_25-001-006

One, yes, the separate charge of civil tax fraud is not tax evasion and is not a crime.

Two, the IRS is a civil agency. It can only bring civil actions, even against alleged crimes. The DOJ, on the other hand, takes criminal referrals. (We tend to see civil siblings to criminal counterparts across our body of law.)

Going back to OP’s question, when people refer to a high-crime neighbourhood, they aren’t talking about parking violations.

Re: Find SF parking cops

#98
post #64

Where I live, many people park at intersections right up to the curb making it almost impossible to see oncoming traffic from the right or left. Really scary when you have a 16-year old driver you're trying to keep safe. There is a very real reason why most intersections require drivers to park 20-30 feet away. Please think of the safety of others and adhere to this rule.

This is now illegal in some states

It's illegal in California but in San Francisco official policy is to not enforce this law.

If there's no red paint on the curb, they won't ticket you.

This is official policy:

https://www.sfmta.com/blog/making-enforcement-fair-our-new-p...

Re: Find SF parking cops

#99
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only love it because you have some perverted dream of 100% enforcement of whatever your rules are. In reality automated enforcement would cause an uproar and the rules would be changed to accommodate the status quo.

> some perverted dream of 100% enforcement No illegally parked vehicles? The negative externalities of illegally parked vehicles charged to the source? I'll dream of that.

That doesn't change the fact that the laws/rules/etc across all sorts of issues are all written half baked with the assumption that enforcers will be reasonable and all sorts of edge cases don't need to be supported.

The reason illegally parked vehicles are illegal is not because they are illegal, that's circular and the peddlers of that sort of logic should be derided if not marginalized. We care about illegally parked vehicles, littering, and all manner of public nuisances because of the downside to the public of said nuisance. Absent the downside there is no reason to care. And if you automate perfect enforcement you will be inundated with tickets for situations that lack downsides that the enforcers were mostly ignoring.

Re: Find SF parking cops

#100

I did a fascinating analysis of SFMTA data a few years back. They posted a public list of names and license plates [1] that they refuse to take down, despite many emails from me over the years. I found a particular license plate that belonged to a plumber with an impeccable 5 star reputation on Yelp, whose business in SF was effectively ended by street sweeping fines. He accidentally paid the same ticket twice, which…

I don't understand or this makes no sense. If he paid the ticket twice, shouldn't SFTMA own him money? Why was it delinquent if he paid twice? Something does not add up in this story.
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