First, the website with a pretty spot-on assesment of our hellish megalopolis:
“Too often, when people think of Los Angeles they envision a maze of asphalt, smog and traffic congestion. The automobile reigns supreme and as a result one’s ability to navigate through the City becomes compromised with the burden of too many vehicles clogging the road. Sidewalks have been narrowed and opportunities for open space, parks, civic plazas and public places have been sequestered into the hills, which unfortunately are often inaccessible to anyone without an automobile. Despite being home to one of the largest urban parks in North America (Griffith Park), Los Angeles significantly lacks adequate & accessible open space, urban parks, plazas and civic centers.”
So Park[ing] Day LA is wants to get rid of parking spaces and improve our city by taking meters and setting up small “parks” around them? Should be a little bit of a headache for some drivers, but at least a pretty headache. Stay tuned for more Car Pit coverage of this!
Not exactly parking related BUT LAist just reported that Nissan intends to debut its EV 12 model 100% electric vehicle to Los Angeles by driving it between Santa Monica, Hollywood and Downtown while projecting videos onto building walls.
The letter came in over the weekend, my first naive thought being “That was quick! I guess my case was an open and shut dismissal!”
Open and shut? I guess. They said it would take two to three weeks, this came in three days. Dismissal? Far from it. As I said before, I have the option to take my case out of the private sector and into the courts: $25 fee, miles of red tape and all. My hunch is to go through with it. I’m convinced that if I can get ahold of the surveillance footage inside the parking garage I won’t have a problem proving my innocence. Stay tuned, everyone!
Guess what?? The above photo is an iPhone shot of the first on-campus parking ticket I ever got as a student at California State University, Long Beach. It was on my very last day of classes, after my very last final (May 22, for the record). The $45 ticket alleged my car was parked in a restricted, coned-off area. But the cones never showed up until after I had parked and went into class. No signs, either.
So I’m fighting it. This my first time ever contesting a ticket (before this, I’ve only been cited for street sweeping, and there isn’t much you can do about that). In California, parking citations are by and large handled by private companies with frustrating, ambiguous websites (as an aside, for a great storyon the horrors of privatized citation processing read Stan Brin’s terrifying OC Weekly piece from a while back).
The day after I got the ticket I appealed the decision to the university’s parking office. A month after that, my appeal was denied. Once your appeal is denied, you’re forced to pay the ticket regardless of whether or not you plan to contest it any more. I paid the ticket today, and mere minutes afterwards sat down with a “neutral party”: a friendly, professional middle aged woman who travels to schools and police departments all over listening to these kinds of second-level appeals. She’s apparently deliberating my case as I write this. Should she decide to uphold the ticket, I can either accept the ruling or double down: I’m allowed to appear in court and contest the ticket, but I have to pay $25 in court fees. If I win, the university will recompensate me the ticket and the court costs—but if I lose I’ll see neither. Here’s hoping it won’t come to that. Stay tuned for updates!
L.A. Streets Blog wrote Tuesday about how our fair mayor is seriously pondering whether or not we should private the city’s meters. The basic framework is as follows: L.A. sells the meters to a private company for a flat fee, making the company for the meters’ upkeep and enforcement of parking tickets. In exchange, the company gets to keep all of those little quaters that you and I put into the mouths of those hungry meters-sort of like how lottery winners can exchange their monthly payments for a lump sum.
My reaction to this story is about the same one I got when first reading that that the city gov’t had put our parking structures on the table: seems like an effective way to get a lot of cash very quickly (which I guess we need nowadays?) but short-sighted and lacking in accountability. All of this is inspired by Chicago’s relatively recent privitazation program which (as Streets Blog also mentioned yesterday) has gotten a mixed reception, at best. What nobody seems to be thinking about, is that this has already happened once and the consequences were disastrous: Washington D.C. sold around 16,500 meters to a private firm known as ACS. In 2007, a governmental study came out to assess the move. Speaks the Post:
“A D.C. government report issued yesterday describes the private management of parking meters in the city as a financial waste, saying the outsourcing not only failed to save money but drove up costs by nearly $9 million from 1999 to 2005. The system is riddled with other problems as well, the report says. Among the findings: The city improperly issued almost 7,000 tickets to vehicles parked at broken meters in that seven-year span, while residents’ complaints about meters jumped from 3,652 in 1997, shortly before privatization, to 89,840 in 2005.”
Actually, it’s hard to be of two minds about something like this. It’s going to be a disaster.
Kevin Ferguson was born in Long Beach, California mere days after the world’s first computer virus was made. He is currently a student and freelance journalist who has published pieces for 89.3 KPCC,Arthur Magazine, KCET, LA Citybeat, Riviera, OC Weekly, L.A. Record, The District Weekly, The Dallas Observer and here. He works in Los Angeles and resides in Long Beach among a row of churches where—except on sundays—parking is never a problem.
Email him at fergusonkevinm [[[[at]]]] gmail [[[[dot]]]] com.
