a cautionary tale of two tickets, broken meters, mutable rules, Daley's Folly and a GIANT tech opportunity
It wasn't easy getting to Rockit the other night for the Built in Chicago meetup. But before I launch into a tale of parking woe Chicago-style, I want to be clear that this is a "stone-in-shoe" issue. Chicago, as repeated early and often on this website, is having a glorious moment, coming into its own as a notable center of tech innovation. Last weekend, I took the "hard hat" tour of 1871 and have been crowing about it to friends on either coast ever since. "It's General Assembly on steroids, only more, different and better!"
But this parking business is not just a pricey annoyance and fodder for those who rank Chicago as the most corrupt city in the nation.It actually throttles innovation by putting a tariff on transportation. It is an added cost of doing business in Chicago. Adding insult to injury, since the government of Abu Dhabi is a major investor in the meter lease deal (a.k.a. "Daley's Folly"), instead of adding revenue to Chicago's coffers, we are contributing to Abu Dhabi's.
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Back to my day of catastrophic parking karma, which began on Clark street, just south of Summerdale on the west side of the street. I was meeting a friend at Kopi Cafe before heading downtown to Rockit and parked in what I thought was a legal space: inside the white line that is supposed to delineate legal street parking, a full two car lengths from the end of the white line. Although there was a bus stop sign, it was two or three car lengths beyond the end of the white line. It never occurred to me that there might be another sign two car lengths behind where I had parked, also indicating a bus stop. All told, about 25% of the block was a bus stop, with enough room for at least two buses.
Live and learn. I dutifully paid the meter for two hours, during which I snagged two count'em two tickets for the very same parking offense. A call to 311 to find out whether one could actually get multiple tickets for the same offense in such a short time revealed that once a ticket is written, it is a version of hell trying to undo the damage. The police spokesman seemed to think that as long as the tickets were written by different officers, it was legal. Theoretically, then, you could get a dozen officers to ticket the same car for the same offense at the same time and that's the Chicago Way. Really?
SO PLEASE LEARN FROM MY PRICEY MISTAKE
Signs trump all. Look carefully. Look behind you. Look for fine print (these things are impossible to read from the street). You are a fly in a spider's web. Don't go there.
My tickets, both for the very same offense, issued just 67 minutes apart, carried different fines: the handwritten ticket was $90 and the ticket with print out receipt $100—a nice absurdist touch.
It turns out, tickets are issued all day long in these two cleverly disguised illegal spaces, generating tens of thousands of dollars a year for the city. And from what I have heard since, there are lots of such traps lurking about. So...
TECH / JOURNO OPPORTUNITY #1
How about some community data mining? (Hello EveryBlock!)? Surely the Parking Department database includes information of which parking spots generate the most revenue—a sure indicator of a trap. Now that's a data visualization I would love to see...
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Duly sobered by my car festooned with orange tickets, I headed downtown. The area around Rockit was pretty crowded so I circled looking for a spot. The LAZ box near the first one—about four blocks west—was broken, a fact you only learn by parking, getting out the car and trying to pay. In no mood to take a chance, I drove around and found spot number two. I parked, got out of the car, went to pay and learned from the tiny computer scroll screen that at that particular time, that particular space was only available for locals.
Third time, though, was a charm and I eventually made it to the meetup.
TECH OPPORTUNITY #2
We may be stuck with these godawful LAZ machines for another 70+ years. So if only for bragging rights and the gratitude of a victimized city, can someone hack a fix so if when a meter box is broken or the rules have changed, the box lights up in a way visible to drivers cruising for a space?
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THE SAN FRANCISCO WAY
Parking is an issue in every major city. And if Chicago trains were safer at night, I would be more inclined to skip driving altogether. I regularly take subways in New York at night, but Chicago is dicier, especially for women.
With typical Silicon Valley geekiness, San Francisco has been experimenting with a tech-driven solution that includes street sensors, data-mining and variable pricing, with revenues funneled towards improved public transporation. The goal isn't only to improve parking. It turns out that "as much as a third of the traffic in some areas has been attributed to drivers circling as they hunt for spaces." Talk about going nowhere in a hurry—and at $4+ per gallon of gas, too.
The program here is being closely watched by cities around the country. With the help of a federal grant, San Francisco installed parking sensors and new meters at roughly a quarter of its 26,800 metered spots. It tracks when and where cars are parked and, beginning last summer, began tweaking its prices every two months — giving them the option of raising them 25 cents an hour, or lowering them by as much as 50 cents — in the hope of leaving each block with at least one available spot. The city also has cut prices at many of the garages and parking lots it manages, to lure cars off the street...
...Meters here can now charge different prices at different times of the day, and the city has lengthened or eliminated time limits. Since the city made it easier to pay for parking with credit cards, and began a program that allows people to find spots and pay for them on their mobile phones — so they no longer have to run out of meals that take longer than expected to feed the meters — fewer parking tickets have been issued.
Fewer parking tickets issued! Longer time limits! Payment by mobile phone! No more mad meter dashes! It's like an alternate universe—one that takes a business-friendlier, climate-friendlier holistic approach to traffic design. The jury is still out on how well it will work, but the alignment of interests is refreshing.
Meanwhile, back on the LAZoo'ed streets of Chicago, I feel like a Goldman Sachs' "muppet," an easy mark to raise some cash.
Can't we do better?
—J. A. Ginsburg / @TrackerNews
RELATED:
- A Chicago Tale of Parking, Innovation, Bad Deals and Better Options / J.A. Ginsburg / TrackerNewsDots
- The Lincoln Park PIrates/ Steve Goodman (video)
