parking...

I read an article in the Daily Cal a few weeks back about what Berkeley does with its parking situation; it seems that they collect lots and lots of revenue with people who pay tickets and all, but what do they do with this money? Hell if anyone knows. One thing is for sure: it sure as hell isn't being used to improve the parking situation in Berkeley. And why would they want to improve it? Keeping it the way it is is perhaps the only way to ensure that they still get the nice revenue. But anyway, I digress...

Most parking available near campus is of the street parking variety. This includes metered spots that have time limits, and random time frames when parking is not allowed. For instance, the stretch of Hearst Ave. right outside of Soda Hall has a "No Parking Monday-Friday 4pm-6pm" thing imposed on it. You'd think they'd give people a few minutes of leeway before ticketing them, but here's what I've seen on occasion on Wednesdays after teaching my 3-4pm discussion section:

In both the above pictures, the city has called on tow trucks to tow away cars that are parked in those spots at 4:10pm. In the top picture you see a tow truck lining up to the Civic that's parked there; below, you see the two truck operator trying to open the door of another car...

But ok, the signs clearly state "No Parking" and they're parked there, so they get towed...fair enough. Hell, I even saw this happening in San Francisco:

my rant

So on one rainy Saturday morning, I drove up to Cory to work on CS152, and to my surprise, a number of spots were free outside the 4^th floor entrance to Soda Hall (granted, they were flooded over, but hey, they were spots!). So I parked in one....or so I thought. I came back to find a ticket on my windshield.

Apparently, in my boneheadedness, I didn't bother to check that the spot that I was parked in had crosswalk lines drawn underneath them. But hey, in my defence, it was raining, and the spot was flooded, and all other signs pointed to that space being a real, legal parking spot. So I appealed the thing, and we'll see what the city thinks.

So my side of the story goes something like this:

1. The spot was flooded so I couldn't easily see the crosswalk lines extending all the way to the curb
2. The curb was unpainted, and there was no wheelchair ramp...in fact, there was a patch of dirt as if for a tree where you'd expect a wheelchair ramp to be for a crosswalk. Not that it mattered because I couldn't see the lines going to the curb.
3. The "cross-hatch" parking spot markers painted away from the curb were painted such as if to indicate that it was a spot.
4. There was even a sign posted next to that space that said "Temporary No Parking: M-F, 6am-5pm", which implies that (1) that is a parking spot, and (2) you can park there on a Saturday.

So to bolster my case against the city, I went back and took pictures of the spot in question the next day...and wouldn't you know, there was a red Camry parked in the spot, with no ticket. You be the judge and tell me if it's a parking spot or not. My take is that either it should be a legal spot, or they should do more to indicate that it is not a legal spot, like paint the curb, re-do the cross-hatches, and take out that sign next to the thing.

So look at the space in which the red Camry is parked. Clearly it's a crosswalk, but look at all the other context clues: the cross-hatch space markers on the road make it look liek a spot; and check out the thing right on the curb: there's a fscking TREE where the crosswalk hits the sidewalk. What kind of crosswalk is that? How does that help pedestrians?

Here's another angle. Notice the sign posted right next to the spot....

And this is what the sign says...

update...2002/07/10

Brian and I noticed this on the way to the BSAC picnic a few days ago: It appears that even the city of Berkeley decided that this crosswalk was pointless (there's no ramp, and goes nowhere), and has finally painted it over. I wonder if I can demand my money back...