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| Angelika/Mike Schilli |
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Michael Over the last couple of years, San Francisco has heavily increased the fines imposed for illegal parking. As you can see in figure 1, back in 2002, I received a parking ticket for $25 when parking our car PERLMAN for an hour on the sidewalk in front of the house, because there were no parking spots available at the time. According to the new parking fee table from 2013, for the same infraction the city now assesses a fine of $110!
Other traffic violations carry more severe fines as well: Parking in a street cleaning zone while the street sweeper is coming through now costs $62. Parking at an expired meter? $72! And it gets really expensive at bus stops, where the city's traffic squad charges $267. It's commonly believed that it's okay to quickly halt at a bus stop and let a passenger out, but if a police officer takes notice and isn't busy chasing gansters, he will relentlessly issue a ticket to fill the city coffers.
And the jackpot is no doubt parking in a parking spot reserved for the disabled. That's almost a thousand dollars: $966. The same fine amount applies to people caught in those reserved parking spots with fake or "borrowed" placards. Ironically, placard abuse is rampant in the United States. Pay attention to what kind of people are occupying the reserved spots, and you'll find that they're often astonishingly quick on their feet. A while ago, I pondered the idea of building a website to expose these douchebags via their license plates. If I only had more time!
Some time ago, at the beach of Pacifica, we saw a dad with two kids park a car with a disabled placard in a handicap spot. Minutes later, he hauled a surfboard 600 feet to the beach, without any visible physical impairment. I wonder what he was suffering from?
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