Tuesday, January 24, 2017

The Heroes We Need

People always park in crosswalks around here. It's bad. It's unsafe. There are a lot of elderly people in the neighborhood who do, yes, walk places. They need access to the crosswalk and the associated curb cuts (the good kind, not the garage front kind). There's a bit of an enforcement hole, as the state authority tasked with enforcing parking violations tends not to patrol areas without permit parking, and the cops understandably think they have better things to do. Cars also block sight lines, making accidents more likely. There neeeds to be more enforcement. People get enraged by this idea.

There are a lot of ways to improve the parking situation - such having more residential parking permit areas (permits are really really cheap) to cut down on the number of people who just use it to store their beaters and people who use it as a parking lot for the bus line - but too many people prefer the "just let me park wherever the fuck I want" solution (blocks need to vote to get permits, many refuse), which doesn't really help. Also, too, it's unsafe.