Ticketed this morning for double parking?

Subject: Re: Ticketed this morning for double parking?

DudaHustle wrote: I know its illegal but I have been doing the Park Slope double park thing for street cleaning every Monday since November. (always leaving my phone number in the window so as not to screw anyone who might be boxed in)

My ENTIRE street (President St) was slapped with $115 tickets this morning.

Did this happen to anyone else - and thoughts about how deal with street cleaning if this is now obviously being cracked down on?

thanks very much!!

Sorry to hear that. I wish they would ALWAYS ticket EVERY double-parked car that did NOT have a phone number in the window though.

my vespa didn't get a ticket, and it has been sitting on Pres. all weekend.I guess you just have to know someone.

damn thats harsh you cant do anything about it. thats why when i do double parking, i stay in the car when they finish "sweeping" i move it back to the other side.

Subject: Re: Duh

mtzmtz wrote: [quote=findcate]But apparently they are allowed to ticket for it.

Um, it is illegal.

Good point, but given the no win situation for car owners, I can see a ticket under those circumstances being tough to swallow. It would, however, be cool if they had a car going up and down Coney Island Avenue all day issuing tickets to all the double parkers that make 3/4's of that strip single lane.

Subject: Re: Duh

mtzmtz wrote: [quote=findcate]But apparently they are allowed to ticket for it.

Um, it is illegal.

Totally. Though I do think $115 is pretty steep.

Subject: Re: PARKING TICKETS

DudaHustle wrote: [quote=LGOLD606] There is a website that you may want to give a try too, which is ParkingTicket.com they will charge you a service fee and if they are not successful there is no charge for there service. I believe the fee is about half the cost of the ticket. good luck!!!

Thank you so much...
Since you were in violation of the letter of the law, I don't think that's going to work, unless they find some technical flaw with how the ticket was written. It's worth a shot, since there's nothing to lose, but I wouldn't have high hopes about beating this one.

Ben wrote: [quote=DudaHustle]well there is no time of day listed so maybe that might help me - who knows.

No time of day listed should get you off the hook.

I would contact your local council and/or community board person and try to get all of your neighbors to do so as well. While it is technically illegal, if no one could double park during street cleaning there would be a major parking issue that would impact the quality of life for many citizens of brooklyn.

The fact that the whole street got tickets gives your local reps more ammo to fight this as it could set a dangerous precedent.
I think that's a bad idea. There is no "right" to double park. It's illegal, and if you make waves about this, you're more likely to lose the unwritten privilege you currently enjoy.

You've got a good shot of beating the ticket because they didn't list the time. If I were you, I'd count my blessings and leave it at that before you provoke them into coming around and doing this every week.

Yeah, I figured I'd get flamed for saying it but I stand by what I said.

The system is currently flawed, the fine for not moving your car is $45, for double parking it's $115. So if they start to enforce the double parking, people will just leave their cars where they were in the first place.

There are areas where a very significant amount of the parking is removed for hours during the day. For instance, from 6th Ave to 8th Ave 50% of the parking is removed for street cleaning for a 3 hour block during the middle of the day. 7th Ave is growing as a commercial strip with employees and customers needing places to park. Unfortunately, the cars can't just vanish.

So some unwritten rules have been worked out to allow for the smooth operation of city services which includes being allowed to double park during street cleaning. If you start messing with this then there has to be another solution that is introduced to deal with the problem that street cleaning creates.

And BTW, I'm all for looking at ways to cut down on the use of cars but I don't think that enforcing these rules to the letter of the law is an effective one.

Ben wrote: The system is currently flawed, the fine for not moving your car is $45, for double parking it's $115. So if they start to enforce the double parking, people will just leave their cars where they were in the first place.

I'm with you, Ben -- it may be illegal, but it's a stupid law, at least in as much as it's counterproductive to getting the streets cleaned.

I might disagree with you about what exactly the dangerous precedent is in this situation, though -- I might make the argument that mass noncompliance with a law under the assumption that "everyone does it," or even the existence of "unwritten rules," is the dangerous precedent. Of course, people being people it's much more likely that everyone will disobey a stupid law that's unevenly enforced rather than go through the effort of trying to get it changed.

Well I wish they would ticket thosej erks who double park all day Sunday in front of the Greek Orthodox church on 8th Ave and 2nd - wealth evidently has its privileges.

There is increased "ticketing" activity in Park Slope on all fronts. I saw two different people in Prospect Park get tickets for having their dogs off leash - they were stunned to say the least.

I think it's out of boredom and due to having to justify the presence of more cops in and around PP and PS since the muggings this summer in PP.

Livetotravel wrote:
There is increased "ticketing" activity in Park Slope on all fronts. I saw two different people in Prospect Park get tickets for having their dogs off leash - they were stunned to say the least.

When and where? If they were outside the designated areas or it wasn't off-leash time, then I don't really have any sympathy. I've heard of people being ticketed for having a dog offleash as they were leaving the Long Meadow at 9:02 a.m., but I've never actually seen it.

On the alternate-side parking issue, I thought the local community boards had reached an agreement with the NYPD that people could double-park during street-cleaning time. I agree that it's wrong to let people do it for years, and then suddenly surprise them with tickets. Why not go after all the people double-parked in the bike lane on 5th Avenue? Those street-cleaning machines don't do anything except make noise and blow dirt around, as far as I can tell.

WillRegisterSoon wrote: . Thats life I guess.

i know, but it sucks. once, when i was blocked in and late, when the woman finally came to move her car i VERY KINDLY told her she was supposed to leave a note. she said that wasn't true, i said yes, it actually was. and she told me to go fuck myself.

Rose wrote: When and where? If they were outside the designated areas or it wasn't off-leash time, then I don't really have any sympathy. I've heard of people being ticketed for having a dog offleash as they were leaving the Long Meadow at 9:02 a.m., but I've never actually seen it.

Off-leash time is another "unwritten" rule, if I understand correctly -- technically it is never legal to have a dog off a leash in a public non-fenced-in (i.e., dog run) space, as far as I know. Of course, I'm not a lawyer or a city official, so I could always be (& frequently am) wrong.

I'm not saying I don't think there shouldn't be off-leash time in parks -- I just think that if enforcement of a statute/law is done selectively, it's going to lead to situations just like the alternate-side parking thing. Unofficially allowing activities that are technically in violation of the law encourages people to do things which are legally indefensible -- and then perhaps an ornery official decides to enforce those rules on random Tuesdays, or only to harass people they may not like, or when the month's parking ticket totals are low.

<soapbox>
I should say I don't own a car or have a dog, so this debate is purely academic to me -- I just have a real problem with selective enforcement of laws: if a law needs to have unwritten exceptions to it in order to be viable, it's a bad law & those affected by it should endeavor to get it changed. I mean, what's the advantage of representative democracy if those living under its laws cannot affect change in those laws?
</soapbox>

brooklynpotter wrote: [quote=WillRegisterSoon]. Thats life I guess.

i know, but it sucks. once, when i was blocked in and late, when the woman finally came to move her car i VERY KINDLY told her she was supposed to leave a note. she said that wasn't true, i said yes, it actually was. and she told me to go fuck myself.
That seems foolish for someone who lives on the block, since it would be so easy to let the air out of her tires, slash the tires, key the paint, break the window, crazy glue the locks... whatever, at a later time (not that I'm advocating this in any way).