[HN Gopher] Find SF parking cops
___________________________________________________________________
Find SF parking cops
https://walzr.com/sf-parking/about/
Author : alazsengul
Score : 814 points
Date : 2025-09-23 18:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (walzr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (walzr.com)
| supportengineer wrote:
| Very well done! Outstanding site, it is clear and easy to use. I
| supposed you'll be forced offline soon due to legal threats.
| jacobolus wrote:
| If the goal is to prevent this kind of thing, it would probably
| be better to just not put the ticket info online, publicly
| visible, in real time.
| sbarre wrote:
| It looks like this system applied security through obscurity,
| more or less, though.
|
| I doubt it's the intention of the system to make all tickets
| "publicly visible" in this way.
|
| I'm not sure we'll legal threats involved (who knows,
| hopefully not) but I suspect the city will be motivated to
| find some way to lock down the system to prevent this kind of
| enumeration attack on their database.
| sealthedeal wrote:
| Great job!!
| packeted wrote:
| Wow, great work. This is the kind of citizen hackery we need in
| society :)
| PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote:
| Why do you think that a tool to help people break the rules is
| somehow good for society?
| majkinetor wrote:
| It makes rules harder to break? It inspires kids to be
| knowledgeable because it can be cool? It teaches thinking
| outside the box? It makes you question your surroundings and
| not blindly following the rules?
| oatmeal1 wrote:
| That's a list of bad reasons. Could we get a list of good
| reasons?
| labubunightmare wrote:
| > posts on _Hacker_ News
|
| > is offended by non-conformity
| AngryData wrote:
| Why do you think breaking rules is automatically bad for
| society?
| PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote:
| Are you a child?
| AngryData wrote:
| Are you? Because rules are not automatically good. The
| Nazis had lots of rules too.
| lanewinfield wrote:
| another riley walz banger!!!
| gala8y wrote:
| Yeah, slowly going through https://walzr.com/. Definitely not
| his first rodeo.
| adolph wrote:
| Worth it for this jpeg:
|
| https://walzr.com/HDR2.jpg
| Lammy wrote:
| Love the leaderboard feature. Relevant fee breakdown:
| https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
| OJFord wrote:
| Seems weird to me (from nowhere near SF) that some of the
| cheapest things to do are to block fire stations, fire hydrants
| and 'fire lanes' (I assume that's like a bus lane but for fire
| engines, in places that's common enough for whatever reason,
| like right by a fire station?) - wheelchair/disability related
| stuff is much more penalised, but even all sorts of other
| 'regular' mis-parking seems for some reason slightly more
| expensive than blocking fire crews. Odd isn't it? Have I
| misunderstood?
| Lammy wrote:
| > Have I misunderstood?
|
| It doesn't count the glass shop bill when the fire fighters
| gleefully fuck up your car to run the hose between the side
| windows.
| apsurd wrote:
| Gleefully?
|
| because they should express remorse and handle your car
| with care vs you know, putting out that fire?
| Spivak wrote:
| Brother in law is a firefighter, gleefully is exactly the
| correct term here. According to him getting to bust
| windows to run the hose is literally their favorite thing
| to do. To the point where even if they don't actually
| need to, or it would be slower, they'll still do it. It's
| apparently a matter of principle.
| apsurd wrote:
| As not a fire fighter, I agree!
|
| I suppose I took OP to say gleefully as if it was
| uncalled for. But maybe it's what you said and they're
| just on the inside. Good to know all around.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think apsurd interpreted Lammy's post as a complaint,
| like the firefighters are too gleeful.
|
| Then apsurd is pointing out that there's no reason to
| complain, and they shouldn't waste time with remorse.
|
| I don't think Lammy actually meant it as a complaint,
| though, which ended up making apsurd's correction
| confusing.
|
| Anyway, I think everyone in the thread agreed: park in
| front of the fire hydrant and nobody feels bad but you as
| you get your window smashed. Broad anti-fire consensus.
| Lammy wrote:
| Correct; not a complaint :)
| apsurd wrote:
| Yes exactly. Funny to read the discussion all on account
| of a single word.
|
| this is why I come to HN
| dsunds wrote:
| My dad, former firefighter, age 83, likes to tell this
| story of someone parked in front of a hydrant and them
| running the hose through the car. He'll be happy it's
| stood the test of time.
| jkubicek wrote:
| If my bike were capable of messing up a car I 100% would
| ram every jerk parked in a bike lane.
|
| So I can see where your BIL is coming from.
| toast0 wrote:
| Gotta practice your jumps and hop up on top of it. It's
| in the lane, but you can be too...
| W0lfEagle wrote:
| Oh if you haven't seen it you're gonna love this.
|
| https://youtu.be/bzE-IMaegzQ?feature=shared
| YokoZar wrote:
| It's San Francisco, parking legally generally requires
| replacing at least one window.
| toast0 wrote:
| > 'fire lanes' (I assume that's like a bus lane but for fire
| engines, in places that's common enough for whatever reason,
| like right by a fire station?)
|
| Fire lanes are not express lanes for fire engines. They're
| more like reserved parking for fire engines only. Typically
| the curb is painted red, and you'll see markings 'no parking
| - fire lane'. I think of these showing up in parking lots
| everywhere you're not allowed to park.
|
| Most of the parking violations are about the same level of
| fine. There's tiers, really big fines are for using disabled
| placards inappropriately, pretty big for blocking disabled
| parking, then blocking busses, abandoning vehicles, defaced
| license plate, no registration, blocking bike, then kind of
| everything else.
|
| Fire lanes fit in the everything else, but they probably get
| more enforcement, so the low per instance fees add up if you
| are highly likely to be ticketted if you park in a red zone.
| rcpt wrote:
| One of the few things that everyone in American society
| agrees upon is that violating disabled parking spots is
| egregiously wrong and should be punished fiercely
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The fine is low because the "typical case" is like a long van
| that's hanging over the line into the hydrant zone or
| something but doesn't actually block access.
|
| They'd rather have the fine be low for the people who are
| actually blocking the fire lanes in spirit in order to rake
| in the money from the people who are only doing it in
| technicality.
| lokar wrote:
| And I think if the situation is a real problem they can tow
| it out of the way
| simonbolivar wrote:
| Love it! how do you use apple maps on web?
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mapkitjs/
|
| If you're a registered apple developer you get like 250k
| requests/day for free
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| You can use "Map Kit JS". You have 250,000 free map views per
| day, however you need an apple developer account
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mapkitjs
| smith-kyle wrote:
| Amazing!
| linehedonist wrote:
| Amazing. Would be even better if it kept everything in Pacific
| time. A little confusing to see "3 hours ago" just because I'm on
| the East Coast.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| As someone from Europe I was a bit confused why SF parking cops
| seemed to only work throughout the night.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Ah, I'm in Central, I just assume the data feed was delayed by
| 2 hours for reason.
| throwaway93626 wrote:
| I've thought about building something that uses CV to detect
| parking cops near me, but this is even better! Now just add a
| paid feature to send alerts when there is a cop within a certain
| radius of you ;)
| mikeodds wrote:
| Thats cool. Would be nice to see annual median take from each
| warden.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Nice to see historical data to show ticket density somehow
| (different areas have very different enforcement)
| enjoylife wrote:
| Officer 0336 is raking it in for the city. I wonder if there is a
| correlation with the areas which generate a lot of tickets and
| other city datasets. Perhaps crime rate or average household
| income?
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's just his area street cleaning no? You'll get whacked by
| that pretty easy. On a different day might be a different guy.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's is amusing that you question whether parking citations
| correlate with crime rates. The reason they give out tickets
| for this is that these people have parked unlawfully.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Traffic tickets are typically civil, not criminal.
| jeffbee wrote:
| [flagged]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _So is tax evasion_
|
| No.
|
| "In the United States, tax evasion constitutes a crime"
| [1].
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/tax_evasion
| jeffbee wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6663
|
| Moreover: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part25/irm_25-001-006
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| One, yes, the separate charge of civil tax fraud is not
| tax evasion and is not a crime.
|
| Two, the IRS is a civil agency. It can only bring civil
| actions, even against alleged crimes. The DOJ, on the
| other hand, takes criminal referrals. (We tend to see
| civil siblings to criminal counterparts across our body
| of law.)
|
| Going back to OP's question, when people refer to a high-
| crime neighbourhood, they aren't talking about parking
| violations.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah, that's my point. It's not a neutral point of view.
| Unlawfully operating cars is the most widespread and
| impactful behavior in SF, followed by wage theft, tax
| fraud, and tenant harassment. And all the other stuff
| that gets discussed as "crime" is in 4th place or lower.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Unlawfully operating cars is the most widespread and
| impactful behavior in SF_
|
| If you think you can convince your fellow citizens to
| criminalise parking tickets, go for it. I doubt it has
| that much support. (But I don't doubt that confidently!)
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Why is it most impactful?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You're not afraid to admit what's marketed as a fine or
| deterrent is simply a weirdly targeted tax but you're
| annoyed that it's sometimes avoidable due to only
| sporadic assessment of it.
|
| IDK what plane this policy spectrum exists on but man is
| horseshoe theory clearly alive and well on it.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Sometimes yes. I've also received tickets from parking
| enforcement for legal parking and good luck disputing that
| without getting into a lawsuit. I literally had a ticket
| issued at a timestamp of when I was on the other side of the
| city.
|
| So there could easily be secondary correlations between areas
| filled with people who are willing to fight invalid citations
| and that might correlate with wealth / crime rates.
| enjoylife wrote:
| Officers are a limited resource, so their deployment matters.
| Are they assigned to areas that most benefit citizens, or
| those that most benefit the city? Is the focus on maximizing
| ticket revenue, or addressing the most dangerous violations,
| like blocked bike lanes? Are they primarily a revenue tool, a
| public safety measure, or just extra eyes on the street? Do
| wealthier neighborhoods receive more enforcement, effectively
| buying themselves safer streets? Basically I'm wondering does
| parking enforcement benefit SF residents uniformly?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Well, if you look at this data, virtually all of the
| tickets are for leaving your car in a street sweeping zone
| at the wrong time. So they are functioning as adjuncts of
| the street sweeping regime. Then you should think about
| this history of street sweeping in San Francisco. I think
| you might find that it is the opposite of your
| preconception. The wealthiest neighborhoods got rid of
| street sweeping decades ago, specifically because they
| didn't want to have to move their cars so much.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Different neighborhoods may want different types/amount of
| enforcement as well. Some neighborhoods may have tiny
| driveways and are happy that a lot of cars can get away
| with parking "illegally" due to non-enforcement and put up
| with the resulting narrow paths where one car has to pull
| aside to let another car past. Other neighborhoods might
| have almost no cars ever parked on the street and people
| get angry if anyone parks in front of "their" curb, even
| though it's a public street and anyone can "legally" park
| there.
|
| This kind of difference in desire from area to area should
| be reflected in municipal codes and have clear signage. But
| sometimes these neighborhood norms are only reflected in de
| facto enforcement, not in de jure written legal code.
|
| This has a parallel in the form of HOA's. Most of the
| justifications I hear for HOA's are that they prevent
| "$THING_1", "$THING_2", and "$THING_3" ... but all of those
| are already prohibited by municipal code and can be
| addressed by making a call to 311. However, citizens of
| many cities often don't have faith in police / code
| enforcement to respond with a proper ticket. Sometimes I
| wonder if all those HOA fees were going to the city if that
| would pay for diligent non-HOA enforcement.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You'd really be up shit creek if parking illegally were a
| crime because there are all sorts of protections afforded to
| those accused of crimes not afforded to those accused of
| parking violations.
| jonas21 wrote:
| You'll probably find a high correlation with the street
| cleaning dataset (if there is one). Nearly all of the tickets
| at the top of the leaderboard are street sweeping violations.
|
| I wonder if street cleaning is net profitable for the city once
| you factor in tickets. That would make cutting the cleaning
| frequency [1] a doubly bad idea.
|
| [1] https://sfstandard.com/2025/02/18/san-francisco-city-hall-
| st...
| swores wrote:
| Unless a less frequent schedule makes it easier for people to
| forget when it's happening, leading to more people to
| ticket...
|
| (Just a random hypothetical thought, I'm not saying that is
| the case or their motivation, only that it theoretically
| could be)
| larkinrichards wrote:
| there is -- https://data.sfgov.org/City-Infrastructure/Map-
| of-Street-Swe...
|
| "undergoing maintenance" but spot check of data looks correct
| to me.
|
| Street cleaning tickets are given efficiently and enforcement
| is conducted to minimize the time that people can't park. 2-4
| parking officers drive in front of the street cleaning
| vehicles and ticket everyone parked. if you're watching at
| the time you'll see almost every car on the street pull out
| in front of the officers, circle the block and park right
| back in the same -- but now clean -- spot. those that don't
| get tickets.
| fhub wrote:
| Some day the forward facing cameras on your car will read the
| street cleaning signs and warn you before you park and notify
| you if you are still parked there when street cleaning
| day/time is approaching. The nuance is that you are allowed
| to park after the truck has gone by (in SF).
|
| https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/drive-park/how-avoid-
| pa...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Cool app! What a pity. I wish we had more of them here in SOMA.
| Big open void.
| dheera wrote:
| Need to pair this with an API for Tesla FSD so that cars just
| move themselves automatically
| spankalee wrote:
| Or just pay the very reasonable fee for storing your private
| property on public land.
| dheera wrote:
| I'm fine with paying the fee but
|
| (a) It should be automatic -- if they have the tech to
| enforce parking like a witch hunt, they should have the tech
| to just charge people for parking automatically just like
| Fastrak and everything else. Just have parking meters look
| for a Fastrak transponder and charge that account for
| parking, and also automatically send texts to the phone
| number and e-mail associated with the Fastrak account if time
| limit is reached. Make the city a good UX. Parking payment
| should be a zero-effort operation. I shouldn't have to make a
| wager on how many minutes I'm going to take to finish my meal
| and risk wagering too many minutes (overpaid) or too little
| (get fined). Just charge me according to my actual usage.
|
| (b) Parking signs are too goddamn hard to parse, that's the
| real problem.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Believe it or not, parking reformists tend to agree! The
| fact we even have a parking "fine" indicates that it isn't
| really priced right; if you park somewhere you should just
| pay the market rate for doing so, whether it's for 30
| minutes or 30 days.
|
| The legendary Donald Shoup (who sadly died this year)
| https://www.shoupdogg.com/ - writes about this in The High
| Cost of Free Parking
| avidiax wrote:
| Every time I drive in SF, I pay for parking, and then get a
| parking ticket.
|
| Apparently I'm supposed to know that a red parking meter is
| for trucks. The "trucks-only sign", if there was even
| supposed to be one, wasn't attached to that meter or the
| parking sign.
|
| The other time I was the first to arrive on a block, and
| paid the wrong meter out of confusion.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > (b) Parking signs are too goddamn hard to parse, that's
| the real problem.
|
| Product idea: a smartphone app that uses your GPS location
| to tell you how many tickets have been given at a specific
| location, how recently, and the day/time distribution.
|
| Then pair that with an AI model that's trained on the
| signage to be able to parse what it says, and I bet you
| could very accurately predict whether a given spot is at
| risk of getting you a ticket.
| prepend wrote:
| Clever how you figured out the pattern in ticket numbers and how
| they relate to individual officers.
| ceayo wrote:
| Nice apple-like design, looks really good! Especially those three
| dots in the top-left.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Part of me says, "What a clever hack! Can I get a notification
| feature wrt where I parked?"
|
| The other part of me says "Can we just use Public goods more
| responsibly instead of scratching and clawing our way through
| maximizing every second of monopolizing public spaces for our
| personal property storage"
| spankalee wrote:
| > $158 > 99 Grove St > 10:43 AM * Truck >
| Blocking bike lane
|
| Thank you, Officer 0227!
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Wish we had officers like that in NYC :,)
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| They're too busy parking in bike lanes.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Grove Street, home
| MontagFTB wrote:
| This is amazing. Can we get a heat map of ticket disbursements?
| spankalee wrote:
| Hopefully the city already has that, ideally correlated with
| the coverage from GPS on the officers' cars or devices.
|
| Then they could see where they're under-patrolling and adjust
| their routes to fill in the gaps.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Is this real time? I don't see anything moving.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| What would really be incredible would be if the city made this
| kind of data public intentionally.
| jer0me wrote:
| They do! There's a data set, updated daily:
| https://data.sfgov.org/Transportation/SFMTA-Parking-Citation...
|
| It currently has 22 million parking tickets dating back to
| 2008.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Incredible!
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Huh - I don't know if I like those data being available in
| that format. I feel like they could probably split it up so
| specific plates aren't available to the public alongside the
| lat/long.
|
| As it is, it would likely be an effective way to track
| someone's routines. All you need is a license plate and you
| can likely get a list of many places they've been since 2008.
| That's especially true since it includes citations for things
| like street cleaning violations, which in my experience most
| people will get at least once when living somewhere. I bet a
| _lot_ of those plates can be tied to at least the block the
| owner resides with this dataset.
| khuey wrote:
| I'd be interested in a "loserboard", i.e. who consistently writes
| the fewest tickets.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The loserboard _I 'd_ be interested in is which _license
| plates_ consistently receive the most tickets.
| throwaway93626 wrote:
| I'd guess the top spots are just super wealthy people who
| figure that at their "hourly rate", paying for parking is
| basically more costly than just eating the tickets. Like if
| someone's time is worth $10k+/hour, the parking tickets are
| basically just premium parking fees that are still "cheaper"
| than spending even a minute dealing with payment... Let your
| assistant pay whatever tickets you get in the mail instead.
| edm0nd wrote:
| This was our old CFO.
|
| He would park directly in front of our office building that
| was located inside a large complex that had a movie
| theater, fancy restaurants, and all kinda stuffs like that.
|
| They couldnt tow so they would just write a ticket for
| being in the spot after like 60 minutes. He racked up
| thousands in tickets and simply just didnt pay them. Never
| got in trouble either lol. Since it was private property, I
| guess the owners just didnt care that much. He was a super
| douche and ended up quitting thankfully.
| creddit wrote:
| They are definitely people who live in their cars and don't
| pay the tickets.
|
| EDIT: did a search to see if anyone had analyzed this and
| here's reporting that shows basically this. None of the top
| cars are remotely luxury, eg.
|
| https://sfstandard.com/2024/04/15/parking-tickets-san-
| franci...
| throwaway93626 wrote:
| Good point. I wonder if it might be a bimodal
| distribution - peaks for the super poor and the super
| wealthy. Of course, there are more poor than wealthy, so
| maybe you'd need to look at the rate per capita for
| different income brackets.
| creddit wrote:
| Maybe but honestly your logic doesn't really make any
| sense to me anyway. If my time is worth $10k/hr, why am I
| driving myself? That alone is a huge waste of money.
|
| My only knowledge of significant parking ticket
| acquisition from upper classes comes from lawyers outside
| courthouses. I tried looking for reporting on this but it
| may have just been a hyper local thing to where I grew
| up.
| brigandish wrote:
| Could be family, I knew the daughter of a wealthy man who
| used to park wherever she liked and would pay the tickets
| without a second thought. I never asked her about it, but
| given what I remember of her (very personable and naive)
| she probably didn't see it as a problem, she just paid
| them and that was it.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is the insight behind demand-driven parking fees. The
| super wealthy folks who can pay an infinite amount for the
| spot won't matter how much the spot costs, they'll just pay
| the fee.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Having the ticket price linked to their income would
| immediately make the game fair. If you earn 10k/h and you
| need to pay a 100k ticket you will be more careful.
|
| A millionaire in Finland got a 120kEUR ticket for speeding
| a bit over the limit
| (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/06/finnish-
| busine...). IIRC the CFO of Nokia had a similar experience.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > super wealthy people
|
| They probably don't drive themselves. I guess they have a
| driver, so ticketing isn't an issue.
| smegma2 wrote:
| It exists: https://www.sfmta.com/media/9654/download?inline
| khuey wrote:
| This appears to be a list of overpayments they haven't been
| able to refund, not a ranking of total fines to any given
| plate.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| The reverse engineer of the ID system is worth its pound of
| google riddle. Well done.
| spankalee wrote:
| It would be great to see more automatic payment and enforcement.
| It's great that buses can issue tickets for blocking bus lanes,
| but I would absolutely love for their to be more automatic
| enforcement of blocking bike lanes and meter violations.
|
| I'm not in SF a lot these days, but I have noticed some
| particularly fancy parking meters that at least have tap-to-pay
| and might have more. Instead of a ticket, you should just be
| charged for how long you stay. And instead of a strict time
| limit, just raise the rates the longer you parks.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Is it illegal to block bike lanes in SF? I ask because it is
| _not_ illegal to do so in California, according to the learner
| 's permit test my daughter recently took.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| The DMV is unfortunately wrong about this, with an invalid
| interpretation of CVC - the DMV handbook is NOT the law (it's
| a simplistic layman's interpretation), and is not a valid
| legal defense.
|
| That said, in SF proper it's absolutely inarguably illegal as
| a violation called "Obstructing traffic" in the SF
| transportation code. A bike lane is an active travel lane for
| vehicles as defined under the CVC (including bicycles), and
| therefore stopping in one is illegal just like stopping in a
| car lane. I've had drivers cited for this in the past.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I've had drivers cited for this in the past.
|
| I'm curious how you've managed to achieve this?
|
| I haven't found SF311 very responsive to requests related
| to illegal parking. Even if they respond, wouldn't the car
| be gone by the time they show up?
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Yeah, they ignore SF311 reports by policy. I've managed
| it by flagging down an amazingly helpful parking control
| officer that happened to be in the area, or else by
| calling and reporting an obstruction of traffic (not
| mentioning the bike lane) and then waiting until the PCO
| arrived and talking to them.
|
| The officers have almost always been helpful, but I think
| they generally tend towards lower confrontation and more
| "efficient" violations like street sweeping or expired
| meters by default (or perhaps directed by management).
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| by calling and reporting an obstruction of traffic
|
| Would you be able to share the rough process, and how
| long it usually takes?
|
| e.g.
|
| - Do you call 311 or a different number?
|
| - How soon have you had someone arrive at the scene?
| scottbez1 wrote:
| This was years ago when I was younger and had more free
| time. I called SFMTA traffic directly (you learn the menu
| tree quickly). It varied but I want to say it usually
| took between 20 minutes to over an hour, including
| multiple callbacks to check on status and ensure they
| knew I was serious
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Thank you for sharing that. It clears up my confusion. I
| thought perhaps you had found some magic way to get them
| to do something without you needing to disrupt your day.
|
| It doesn't seem worth the time investment, as it won't
| have any effect beyond the particular incident you're
| reporting. It won't increase the threat of enforcement
| such that people decide not to break the law.
| hedora wrote:
| I read the driver's manual a few years ago.
|
| Fun fact: If there's a bus or trolley car picking up
| passengers at the curb, you must pass it on the right in CA.
|
| I'm almost tempted to try it when there's no one but a cop
| around, and then hand the book to them when they pull me over
| for driving on the sidewalk.
| voxic11 wrote:
| I don't think needing to pass on the right is a defense
| against driving on the sidewalk. I think it just implies
| that you cannot pass while they are picking up passengers.
| gruez wrote:
| Yeah I think the intention is to prevent someone who
| disembarked from the bus and are then crossing the street
| from getting mowed down by a car overtaking from the
| bus's left. It's similar to why you can't pass a school
| bus when it has its stop sign out.
| hedora wrote:
| It was clearly a typo in the book. There's even a diagram
| showing that people are loading from the right, and a
| sentence saying you pass on that side while passengers
| are loading.
|
| If they meant "don't pass while it is stopped", they
| would have said that instead of writing the equivalent of
| "you can pass when [false]"
| Aloisius wrote:
| I think you might have misinterpreted that rule?
|
| It is for light rail/trolleys (not buses) and only when
| you're on a two-way road and there's room to pass on the
| right. It also applies when they're moving, not just when
| they're stopped.
|
| Basically, if a trolley/light rail has tracks in one of the
| left lanes of a two-way road, you must pass on the right
| unless directed otherwise by a traffic cop.
|
| The reason is that these vehicles obstruct vision and
| you're not allowed to overtake and pass on the left when
| you can't see oncoming traffic or when approaching an
| intersection/grade/curve/oncoming traffic or your view of a
| bridge/viaduct/tunnel within 100 feet is obstructed.
|
| https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/california-driver-
| han...
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySecti
| o....
| tjohns wrote:
| If so, then the DMV test is (presumably) wrong. California
| Vehicle Code SS21211 says it's generally illegal to block a
| bike lane:
|
| "No person may place or park any bicycle, vehicle, or any
| other object upon any bikeway or bicycle path or trail, as
| specified in subdivision (a), which impedes or blocks the
| normal and reasonable movement of any bicyclist unless the
| placement or parking is necessary for safe operation or is
| otherwise in compliance with the law."
|
| https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/vehicle-code/veh-sect-21211/
|
| CVC SS21209 says that you can park in a bike lane only if
| parking is otherwise permitted (e.g. it's a marked parking
| spot).
|
| https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/vehicle-code/veh-sect-21209/
|
| SF city code also lists it as a separate parking infraction:
| https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s.
| ..
|
| Checking the DMV handbook, their description is similar. They
| say "it is illegal to drive in a bicycle lane unless you are
| parking ( _where permitted_ )" - plus turning or
| entering/exiting the road. [Source: CA Driver's Handbook, pp.
| 17, emphasis mine]
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Note that 21209 does not say "otherwise permitted" but
| "permitted." One interpratation (perhaps what the DMV is
| using) is that, since curb parking is generally permitted,
| parking in a bike lane that abuts the curb would also be
| generally permitted.
|
| The city I live in put up "no parking in bike lane" signs
| everywhere, presumably to address this ambiguity.
|
| FWIW the DMV test question was bad in other ways; it was a
| multiple choice asking "Which of these is not an illegal
| place to park:" with the correct answer being "in a bike
| lane." My daughter got it wrong not just because of not
| knowing the answer, but also because the double-negative
| confused her.
| swores wrote:
| What was the double negative? You haven't included one in
| your telling of the question ( _" Which of these is not
| an illegal place to park:" with the correct answer being
| "in a bike lane."_ - that's just a single negative...)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Not and illegal. "Which of these is a legal place to
| park" is more clear.
| swores wrote:
| Ah, I hadn't thought of illegal as counting for a double
| negative - it's not one for how I think, but I totally
| see both why you said it and why it would be a double
| negative for some people! Thanks for explaining
| lazide wrote:
| The CA drivers handbook has several issues like this. For
| instance, despite its insistence, it is _not_ illegal to
| change lanes in an intersection.
|
| It is however usually unwise/dickish to do so. Hence why it
| is in the test that way.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You only love it because you have some perverted dream of 100%
| enforcement of whatever your rules are. In reality automated
| enforcement would cause an uproar and the rules would be
| changed to accommodate the status quo.
| echelon wrote:
| > some perverted dream of 100% enforcement
|
| No illegally parked vehicles?
|
| The negative externalities of illegally parked vehicles
| charged to the source?
|
| I'll dream of that.
| hedora wrote:
| I think you'll find this leads to infinite fine revenue and
| higher congestion in pretty much all cities.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _think you'll find this leads to infinite fine revenue
| and higher congestion in pretty much all cities_
|
| How? Laffer curve will max out as behaviour adjusts. And
| that adjustment means folks parking legally or forgoing a
| car or the area in question, not driving around in
| circles for fun.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That doesn't change the fact that the laws/rules/etc across
| all sorts of issues are all written half baked with the
| assumption that enforcers will be reasonable and all sorts
| of edge cases don't need to be supported.
|
| The reason illegally parked vehicles are illegal is not
| because they are illegal, that's circular and the peddlers
| of that sort of logic should be derided if not
| marginalized. We care about illegally parked vehicles,
| littering, and all manner of public nuisances because of
| the downside to the public of said nuisance. Absent the
| downside there is no reason to care. And if you automate
| perfect enforcement you will be inundated with tickets for
| situations that lack downsides that the enforcers were
| mostly ignoring.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _doesn 't change the fact that the laws/rules/etc
| across all sorts of issues are all written half baked_
|
| Illegal parking is pretty black and white. I wouldn't
| support citizen policing for all violations. But parking
| seems like a good fit.
| ruggeri wrote:
| I believe you are being downvoted because your comment
| violates the guidelines ("Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse
| curiously... Edit out swipes."); anyway, that's why I
| downvoted.
|
| Your later comment that enforcement might benefit from
| latitude to be reasonable and accommodate nuance is not
| invalid, and you could have just said that rather than call
| the gp's aspiration "perverted." The expressed norm of
| guidelines is that your belief that the gp's logic is
| circular does not justify your derision.
|
| Anyway, you will probably be more convincing to others by
| being less insulting.
|
| If you don't want to contribute in adherence to the
| guidelines, what is the point of posting here at all?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I'm being downvoted by being anything less then
| apologetically polite while expressing a viewpoint that
| isn't pro whatever the lowest common denominator wants.
|
| That's just how comment sections that keep "rightthink
| score" are.
| spankalee wrote:
| I couldn't downvote your direct reply to me, but if I
| could have I would have because you're being an ass.
| Calling me "perverted" because I don't think people
| should block bike lanes says way more about you than me.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Not wanting the bike lanes blocked is fine. The problem
| is that you want, as a means to this end, 100%
| enforcement of laws that were never written nor were
| their punishments apportioned with the expectation of
| such with zero regard for the consequences. That is a bad
| thing to be advocating for over such a mundane issue and
| I think it's belies a lack of moral character you often
| see in this subject of discussion (though you do see it
| in others and it's bad there too) wherein people want
| their preferred class of traffic prioritized using state
| force to the determent of all the others.
| _bohm wrote:
| On the contrary, it is not a mundane issue. Traffic
| infractions and parking violations such as blocking bike
| lanes or crosswalks directly contribute to a less safe
| environment for everyone on the street. Traffic fatality
| is the third leading cause of preventable death in the
| United States. It is the cavalier attitudes of people who
| think they should be able to whatever they want, whenever
| they want with their cars that belies a lack of moral
| character.
| spankalee wrote:
| People routinely die because of blocked bike lanes.
| ruggeri wrote:
| You might be downvoted regardless, as you suggest, but
| the guidelines are still the social contract of HN.
|
| What you call "less than apologetically polite" I would
| call "not kind" and "snarky." Did you feel kindness
| toward the gp when you replied?
|
| If you think you're actually following the guidelines,
| then you must carry on.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| There is no social contract in scored internet comment
| sections. The herd will do what makes the number go up.
| If a large number of people showed up and upvoted every
| racist comment to the moon the verbiage in here would
| pivot almost overnight. Mobs don't have self awareness or
| free will.
| ruggeri wrote:
| I think you can't directly acknowledge the guidelines
| because you know you are willfully violating them.
|
| The guidelines are the rules of the road for the
| community. The moral obligation to follow the guidelines
| is not conditional on whether you think the community is
| a mob. Even if you thought you have no obligation to the
| community, your behavior is still disrespectful to the
| intentions of the moderators.
|
| The way you write makes it seem like you hold both the
| community and the guidelines in contempt. What is the
| purpose for you in participating in this community? Would
| it not be better for you and the community both if you
| stop posting like this?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| There's pilot programs to let busses self-enforce their
| lanes. No uproar I've seen, most people are supportive.
| spankalee wrote:
| I would much, much rather have the rules changed to reflect
| what we actually want them to be than to have bad rules that
| we only tolerate because we don't enforce them.
|
| But on that note, I absolutely do think that people should
| pay to store their private property on public land, and that
| they shouldn't block bus lanes, bike lanes or cross walks, or
| run red lights, so I fully support those rules and automated
| enforcement of them.
|
| Why do you think those rules are bad?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Of course, but bad rules enforced imperfectly and good
| rules enforced perfectly are both categorically and morally
| superior to bad rules enforced perfectly because some
| extremist has fantasies of everyone goose stepping in
| perfect line.
| knowitnone3 wrote:
| In some cities, citizens can take pictures and initiate fines
| when they see a violation.
| jimmyl02 wrote:
| This is super fun! The apple maps look for the "Find My" feel was
| a really nice touch
| jshchnz wrote:
| this guy never misses
| creddit wrote:
| Oh man this is so fun but I slightly hate it. It probably won't
| help people avoid parking enforcement much but it could somewhat
| which sucks because I think parking enforcement is a very good
| thing.
|
| More, I worry about the chance a deranged person uses it to track
| a specific SFMTA agent who gave them a ticket.
| apavlinovic wrote:
| This works and feels amazing. How are you doing the swipe up
| panel?
| poorman wrote:
| Someone should plot this on a heat map so we can see what areas
| the parking cops don't write tickets for!
| kami8845 wrote:
| Amazing to see the scale of it. As a piece of feedback my
| assumption is that different officers are assigned to different
| areas and so since street sweeping is either the first and third
| or second and fourth week of the month for most residential
| areas, this will allow different officers to float to the top in
| different weeks. Having at least a 2 week lookback for the
| leaderboard is probably best. Otherwise great work!
| Swizec wrote:
| > street sweeping is either the first and third or second and
| fourth week of the month for most residential areas
|
| On my block we get it 2x/week. I've never seen a street sweeper
| come by and the street is always dirty, but I sure have gotten
| tickets for leaving my vehicle out front overnight on the wrong
| day.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I think the street is dirty precisely because there are
| vehicles out on the wrong day such that the street sweeper
| couldn't sweep that part of the street. Getting a ticket
| means the street sweeper couldn't do its job and you don't
| see clean streets.
| gregschlom wrote:
| As far as I know you only get a ticket if you're actually
| parked there when the sweeper comes by. There's a parking cop
| car following the sweeper and ticketing the cars. You're
| allowed to re-park in the street after the sweeper has done
| its job, even if it's still technically street sweeping time.
|
| So if you've got a ticket, there almost certainly was a
| sweeper that came by at that time.
| dodos wrote:
| Pretty sure it varies depending on where you live. iirc
| When I was in SF the tickets would get distributed ahead of
| time and the sweeper would follow within an hour or so.
| Once the sweeper went by you were free to re-park.
| what wrote:
| They've started looping back after the sweeper passes and
| enforcing the full two hour window.
| gouggoug wrote:
| Since when? Where did you get this information from?
| brianxq3 wrote:
| In Oakland, there are different vehicles that come by for
| different purposes. As I understand it there's an
| agitator, sprayer, and sweeper. You have to know when the
| whole process is complete, so I understand it's easier
| just to avoid for the whole window.
| what wrote:
| The parking enforcement happens before the street sweeper
| comes. There's usually four or five of them and they're
| several blocks ahead of the sweeper. They'll all stop and
| wait 20 minutes for the sweeper to catch up and refill
| water at the hydrant before continuing on.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| FWIW the sweeper comes by my street on the posted schedule.
| Most days one or two parking cops come ahead of the sweeper
| writing tickets. I have never seen them come behind the
| sweeper though I have seen the sweeper wait for them. I
| believe it is policy not to write tickets after because as
| other posts have noted it is perfectly legal to park right
| after the sweeper comes through even if it is still sweeper
| hours.
|
| Of course we are on the corner and the other street does not
| get sweeping (it is also concrete). I assume that is because
| it is too steep.
| what wrote:
| It's not "legal" to park after the sweeper comes. It's no
| parking for the full two hour window. I have seen them loop
| back after the sweeper passes to give more tickets.
| electrum wrote:
| According to https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/drive-
| park/how-avoid-pa...
|
| > During street sweeping hours, you may not park until
| the street has been physically swept.
| obblekk wrote:
| This is awesome. Coolest hacker demo I've seen in a while.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Incredible work. I'm disappointed to see so many of the
| leaderboard items are street cleaning tickets.
|
| I get it - street cleaning are "easy" tickets to write in bulk,
| and therefore efficient ROI for PCO time, but they're not the
| most important violations to cite compared to safety-critical
| things like blocked bike lanes (which SFMTA has an official
| policy to completely ignore citizen reports thereof), double-
| parking, or red zone (including daylighting) violations.
|
| Part of the issue is improper fine structure (though I think this
| is at least partly controlled by the state?) - tickets for
| blocking a bike lane are rarely written and therefore it's a good
| bet to just do it and odds are in aggregate it's cheaper than
| paying for parking legally.
|
| UPS, FedEx, Amazon, Uber etc rely on this as a cheap cost of
| doing business, externalizing their costs onto the safety of the
| public. SFMTA even offers bulk payment discounts to UPS, when
| they should be charging escalating fines for repeat offenders.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Incredible work. I'm disappointed to see so many of the
| leaderboard items are street cleaning tickets.
|
| Why wouldn't it be? It's basically spawn camping or deer
| baiting or shooting fish in a barrel or whatever analogy you
| want to use.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Agreed, and it provides important revenue for transportation
| projects and helps keep our streets clean so I wouldn't want
| SFMTA to adjust that focus as-is.
|
| I just wish we had proper (read: higher, accounting for real
| negative externalities and likelihood of citation) fines for
| other violations that pose active public safety concerns such
| that SFMTA would be incentivized to also focus on those and
| not just the "easy" ones. It would also disincentivize
| antisocial behavior by repeat offenders.
| hahahacorn wrote:
| On principle, I agree.
|
| In practice, delivery vehicles don't have a place to safely
| stop, because that space is allocated to free street parking
| for private vehicles.
|
| Subsidized street parking for cars are externalizing their
| costs onto UPS/Fedex/Amazon, etc. who are then passing that
| cost along to the safety of the public.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Yep! Market rate for private parking, and offering subsidized
| short-term commercial parking (which generally has broader
| societal benefit than private parking) with appropriate
| safeguards for abuse would be great!
| bahmboo wrote:
| Where should the delivery trucks park if there is no
| infrastructure for them and the public has an ever increasing
| appetite for delivered products? Try to think about it from the
| delivery drivers point of view and their safety. The roads are
| not any one users exclusive resource. We all pay for them and
| they must be shared.
| andrepd wrote:
| Bike lanes reduce the number of cars on the road and
| therefore make it _easier_ for vehicles that are actually
| necessary (delivery, work, emergency, etc) to travel and
| park, not harder. So do all viable alternatives to driving.
| That in 2025 people still unironically say "just one more
| lane bro, and we'll solve traffic" is almost unbelievable.
| bahmboo wrote:
| Ok. I understand bike lanes. I didn't say anything about
| more lanes, bro. I am talking about delivery vehicles and
| the challenges they face in urban environments. Keep in
| mind that a delivery driver can spend as much time on foot
| as they do in their vehicle. This means interacting with
| vehicles and bikes as a laden pedestrian. They are
| compromised and it can be dangerous.
| bahmboo wrote:
| Delivery vehicles reduce the number of cars on the road and
| therefore make it easier for bicycles to negotiate the
| roads. One delivery vehicle can easily replace dozens of
| car trips.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| In commercial loading zones! We've allocated the color yellow
| for this in SF.
|
| If commercial drivers petitioned SFMTA to convert more
| private parking spaces into commercial zones I'd be signing
| petitions and backing them in their goal 100% of the way.
|
| But generally I've found that commercial drivers would rather
| just violate the law and endanger others rather than engaging
| in activism for better infrastructure on our streets, so it's
| hard to feel sorry for them if they're cited and fined as a
| result.
| bahmboo wrote:
| I can't speak for SF I'm in Seattle. I don't think it is
| incumbent on delivery drivers to do activism for their
| employers. That's my opinion. And I still don't understand
| why people don't see that the delivery driver on foot is a
| vulnerable user of the roads and sidewalks. We aren't
| perfect but we are there for the public not because we like
| it.
|
| Someone else mentioned "externalizing" the cost of parking
| via citations. Those are expensive and a trove for the
| city. That sounds more like subsidising than externalizing.
|
| As far as feeling sorry for "them" - that is a
| disconcerting view of a servant class.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| UPS drivers don't need to write their congressperson. UPS
| the company can just get their lobbyists to pressure city
| officials to convert more street parking spaces to
| commercial only spaces.
| woah wrote:
| One 5 minute delivery spot is as good as many regular parking
| spots since it won't be taken up by long term parkers. You
| could probably eliminate 90% of parking spots and turn the
| other 10% to 5 minute spots and it would be easier for
| delivery drivers than the status qou
| bahmboo wrote:
| I agree. And on top of that it would be great to have spots
| with ALPRs that delivery companies can pay for their use
| and discourage or tow non-compliant vehicles.
|
| Covid time encouraged new food pickup priority parking
| spots but I don't see a lot of new thinking around emergent
| street use needs. We have massively increased delivery
| culture and micro mobility shares and city planning is
| lagging. (I think delivery is great - fewer car trips and
| just overall more efficient - my opinion).
| AngryData wrote:
| Your mistake is thinking parking tickets exist to benefit the
| people and create a better city. But in reality they mostly
| exist as an easy revenue stream for cops and courts. The fact
| that it incidentally helps once in awhile is just the excuse
| needed to keep the revenue stream alive.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| I did a fascinating analysis of SFMTA data a few years back. They
| posted a public list of names and license plates [1] that they
| refuse to take down, despite many emails from me over the years.
| I found a particular license plate that belonged to a plumber
| with an impeccable 5 star reputation on Yelp, whose business in
| SF was effectively ended by street sweeping fines. He
| accidentally paid the same ticket twice, which resulted in his
| work vehicle being towed for excessive delinquency on the
| original ticket, which culminated in him moving his plumbing
| business to Utah.
|
| I mentioned his 5 star reputation because several people got on
| Yelp over the years and described situations where he wouldn't
| even charge them money if he could fix something in a few
| minutes. It was very sad to learn how the SFTMA ran an honest
| plumber out of our city, and still won't take his name down off
| the list below (even 8 years after the deadline to respond).
|
| I don't mean to draw undue attention to that list - please
| bombard the SFTMA with emails to take it down, it is a very
| obvious invasion of privacy and laughably unnecessary.
|
| 1. https://www.sfmta.com/reports/escheatment-posting-
| october-20...
| hn_throw_250915 wrote:
| Reading this comment I'm stumped as to what SF can learn from
| this. There's a lesson in there somewhere but I have no idea
| what it could be.
|
| Oh well.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/shorts/fBoqMMPoU9k
| ronsor wrote:
| > street sweeping fines
|
| Why the hell does SF need to sweep the streets so much?
| mmmlinux wrote:
| From all the trash that everyone leaves everywhere. and
| broken glass from car windows getting smashed in. its not a
| nice place.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Generally to keep streets safe to drive on, and pleasant to
| live near.
|
| In particular, SF receives very little rainfall for most of
| the year, which means that leaves and debris easily
| accumulate rather than being washed away at regular
| intervals.
|
| Drivers also have a tendency to leave parts of their vehicles
| - like broken glass and plastic/metal shards - behind when
| they routinely crash into each other, which accumulate on the
| street. Without regular sweeping, those can pose hazards to
| other drivers and bicyclists, and risk being washed into the
| bay via storm drains if not swept.
| creer wrote:
| > Why the hell does SF need to sweep the streets so much?
|
| It does not. All the way to street sweepers zooming down the
| street at full speed. All the way to NOT cleaning the street
| before a major event. All the way to ticketing people for a
| specific "street sweeping" time period but zooming down the
| middle of the street hours later when parked cars are back.
| San Francisco street and sidewalks are disgusting and it's
| their normal condition.
|
| What it is, is a convenient way to write lots of tickets in
| not much time - as mentioned all over this discussion.
| arjie wrote:
| I have a video from a street I used to live on that might
| illustrate what happens in between cleanings (you'll have to
| turn the camera view down to face the curb to see):
| https://youtu.be/ew4fMB7OIyo?t=8
|
| I think at the time the video was taken the red car had been
| there a while.
|
| The video is not very high-resolution admittedly, but you can
| gather how things go. If you'd like, here's a screen grab
| https://imgur.com/a/YTymus3
| Arch-TK wrote:
| I'm curious, how did his name being on this list significantly
| affect his business?
|
| I live in a different country and I can't imagine checking the
| "traffic fine registry PDF on a random government website" when
| considering which plumber to hire.
|
| I don't doubt that this caused him problems, I'm just trying to
| understand how.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| It caused him problems because he didn't think the law
| applied to him, and got charged a lot of fines due to those
| violations.
|
| Incurring higher costs than revenue is a common cause of
| business failures.
| brewdad wrote:
| More likely is he paid a ticket incorrectly. Someone said
| he paid the same ticket twice instead of paying each ticket
| once. Then the city racked up delinquency fines while
| making little to no effort to inform him of these fines or
| the outstanding ticket. One day, he gets towed and can't
| get his van back until thousands of dollars in fines and
| penalties are paid from a ticket that he thought had been
| taken care of long ago.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| I should have clarified - I only found his business through
| that list because I noticed his vanity license plate HPPYPPS,
| which corresponded to a business named Happy Pipes Plumbing
| which I subsequently found on Yelp.
|
| Also, I found out about his van getting towed because I
| scraped towing records from Autoreturn (the city's main
| towing provider - lots of corruption around that deal).
| Autoreturn's website at the time had a query parameter like
| "?towid=1", so you could increment that to pull all towing
| records.
|
| I started working on a pretty in-depth data analysis and
| visualization, similar to what was done here, but I got
| caught up with my day job and some rock climbing dreams. I
| handed over all my research to a few local reporters a while
| back - they were really excited to talk to me in person about
| it, but I haven't seen anything published since.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying! So basically his van kept getting
| towed and he kept losing business as a result? Presumably
| it also cost him to recover his vehicle. So in summary, if
| you got on this list you're just permanently screwed in SF?
| And you can get on this list by paying a fine twice by
| accident?
|
| > "?towid=1"
|
| Funnily, incrementing that number in the country I live in
| would itself be a crime. If the company I did this to found
| out, they could probably take me to court and win.
|
| A wonderful world we live in. :)
| knowitnone3 wrote:
| I don't understand or this makes no sense. If he paid the
| ticket twice, shouldn't SFTMA own him money? Why was it
| delinquent if he paid twice? Something does not add up in this
| story.
| echoangle wrote:
| I think he got two tickets but paid one of them twice and
| forgot to pay the other one.
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Just to confirm, this is what happened - he paid one twice,
| and therefore the other became delinquent. However, if you
| file a FOIA request with the SFMTA and do some basic
| analysis on how much is "owed per license plate", you will
| see that certain license plates have been allowed to accrue
| tens of thousands of dollars in parking fines with
| virtually no towing repercussions, going back as far as
| data is available (2013). Around 80-90% of these vehicles
| are rental cars, around 5-8% of them are commercial
| trucking companies which absorb the cost of 2 tickets per
| day, and this tiny 1% of license plates are effectively
| "lawless parkers" who drive high-end cars and accrue tens
| of thousands of dollars in unpaid parking fines every year.
| RyanOD wrote:
| Where I live, many people park at intersections right up to the
| curb making it almost impossible to see oncoming traffic from the
| right or left. Really scary when you have a 16-year old driver
| you're trying to keep safe.
|
| There is a very real reason why most intersections require
| drivers to park 20-30 feet away. Please think of the safety of
| others and adhere to this rule.
| vhcr wrote:
| This is solved with better infrastructure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_extension
| RyanOD wrote:
| Yes, I've seen some of this. While it certainly helps, it
| seems like a waste of limited resources. Why can't some
| people just follow such a simple rule?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Waste of what resources?
|
| If anything I'd expect the sidewalk to be cheaper.
| godelski wrote:
| There's a difference between starting from scratch and
| modifying existing infrastructure
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| There is.
|
| But the post saying it's a better method isn't suggesting
| extra labor to do modifications. That's useful just as
| pure knowledge, and also it can be applied into future
| designs or when parts of the road wear out.
| RyanOD wrote:
| In Seattle, I've mostly seen approaches such as this as a
| modification. Though I see your point in a new
| construction situation.
| goopypoop wrote:
| the picture on that article looks like a nice stripy parking
| space
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| A car could push into the first third of it, but visibility
| would be fine in that case. Trying to use the whole thing
| in a car would mean you're jutting into the traffic lane,
| and anyone willing to do that is causing bigger problems.
| And if a bike parks in the stripes that's fine for
| visibility too.
| godelski wrote:
| Great solution but until then I think the gp's point still
| stands.
|
| We as humans need to ensure our actions are done with care
| are forethought. You can't control others but you can control
| yourself and influence others (like this comment attempts to
| do)
|
| Plus, it's a lot cheaper for all of us if we don't need to
| constantly redesign once someone figures out how to "beat the
| game" (see Goodhart's Law). We're social creatures and the
| Tragedy of the Commons is a much more common occurrence than
| people think, especially in large cities.
|
| Our actions affect others.
| knowitnone3 wrote:
| This is now illegal in some states
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| It's illegal in California but in San Francisco official
| policy is to not enforce this law.
|
| If there's no red paint on the curb, they won't ticket you.
|
| This is official policy:
|
| https://www.sfmta.com/blog/making-enforcement-fair-our-
| new-p...
| gboss wrote:
| It makes sense. It was ridiculous that they were originally
| proposing ticketing people without there being signage that
| it was illegal to park there. They need to just paint the
| curbs.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| Is it ridiculous to ticket someone who parks in the
| middle of Market St if there's no sign that it's illegal?
|
| No. Driving a car is a privilege, and a dangerous one at
| that, which requires a competency test. It is not
| unreasonable to expect licensed drivers to know the
| statewide laws that govern that privilege without
| reminder signs.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| While I agree on this, the US is a bit special as having
| a car is considered mandatory.
|
| IMHO, that culture needs to be changed: better public
| transport and walkable cities.
|
| When that is established, then it is also easier to
| revoke the drivers privilege.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Having a car in SF is not mandatory. It's quite useful
| but you can live well without.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| you can live well without
|
| Imagine you and your spouse both work full time, and you
| have 1-2 children. And your definition of 'living well'
| includes having those children learn to swim well, and do
| some sort of after-school sport, and also do math
| supplementation because SFUSD teaches math at a really
| slow pace.
|
| I don't believe any of the above are outlier or
| unreasonable positions to have.
|
| Yet a family in that situation would severely struggle to
| fit everything in if they had to rely solely on public
| transport to get between home, school and after-school
| activities.
|
| (I grew up in London, where public transport is often
| faster than driving. In San Francisco, most of my car
| journeys would take 3-4 times as long by public
| transport.)
| renewiltord wrote:
| Admittedly, public transport is garbage. And for the time
| we'd go to La Petite Baleen, a car is 0.5x the time. So
| in that respect I agree. In Mission Bay everything else
| is close by.
|
| But I think perhaps if someone told me "We don't live
| well. I can only take my child to swim class on the
| weekends" I would think that somewhat strange.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Re: La Petite Baleen: 34 mins vs 1 hour 11 mins for me.
|
| My son's swim school is 20 mins away by car, or 60 mins
| by public transport.
|
| I take your point that these are first world problems.
|
| But my point is that not having access to a car in San
| Francisco _is_ a significant inconvenience and it 's
| incorrect to say 'you can live well' without that access.
| You might not be _so_ inconvenienced that you would say
| "we don't live well", but there's a 'meh' zone in between
| the two.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's "meh" that you can take your kids to
| swim school only on weekends.
|
| LPB is 23 vs 39 for me but I do drive. Either way I
| wouldn't think it "meh".
|
| But I suppose standards of living in the US are by
| default so far ahead of other places that these are
| considered the minimum to not be "meh" here.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| LPB is 23 vs 39 for me but I do drive. Either way I
| wouldn't think it "meh".
|
| The 39 minute journey time doesn't include:
|
| - the time between now and the journey start time
|
| - delays
|
| So you would need to budget an hour each way, i.e. a
| total of 2.5 hours for a 30 minute swim lesson.
|
| Imagine doing that for every single thing you need to do.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Normally I'd agree with you, but I can pick my swim
| lesson time and I don't have to worry about headway
| timing because I know when to leave and the train is
| timed. For untimed services, certainly I'd believe it.
|
| These are complaints of generality that don't have
| relevance in the specific case.
| scottbez1 wrote:
| In some ways, yes, though not in many cities like SF,
| NYC, Chicago, Seattle, etc.
|
| But it's also a chicken and egg problem: often transit is
| not viable or is too slow precisely because everything is
| devoted to cars. The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent
| example - I used to routinely get off the 49 bus and walk
| faster than it stuck in car traffic, but after the BRT
| the bus is a much better and faster experience than
| driving could ever be.
|
| One of the most common reasons for watering down or
| canceling pedestrian, transit, and biking infra projects
| is a refusal to negatively impact driving in any way,
| even if the net societal benefit (especially to lower
| income households who take transit at much higher rates)
| is far greater.
|
| Good governance requires sometimes unpopular choices (see
| Paris's recent bicycle transformation, or SF's recent
| recall election over the creation of a new public park in
| place of a redundant street)
| Lammy wrote:
| > The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent example - I used to
| routinely get off the 49 bus and walk faster than it
| stuck in car traffic
|
| It's funny that you use that particular example
| considering the SF Supervisors of 1958 are the ones who
| created that problem by refusing to build the elevated
| freeway that transit planning engineers correctly
| envisioned we would need. Tearing down the stub end of it
| also created the most dangerous intersection in the city
| at Market & Octavia. As a pedestrian it would be so nice
| to have cars elevated up off the ground instead of having
| to wait to cross on foot. A lot of intersections of
| Octavia and its cross streets don't even allow pedestrian
| crossing at all lmfao
| tanseydavid wrote:
| >> Is it ridiculous to ticket someone who parks in the
| middle of Market St if there's no sign that it's illegal?
|
| I saw someone just parked in the right lane (of two)
| heading up California street at maybe Mason. Just sitting
| there reading a book. <!>
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The law has been widely communicated.
|
| You could argue that people cannot be expected to carry
| tape measures with them, because their glove compartments
| are too small.
|
| But the difficulty of judging the distance from the
| intersection is a factor in a minority of cases.
|
| SFMTA could have chosen to enforce the law but allow a
| tolerance of 5 feet. That would start providing safety
| benefits earlier without surprising any driver who made
| an honest mistake in their estimate of the distance.
| whakim wrote:
| Why? Having a driver's license is a privilege that
| requires you to study and know the rules of the road. The
| onus is on you to know the rules.
| jfim wrote:
| There are also international tourists who may have
| different local parking rules than the ones in SF. Having
| clear demarcations between allowed and non allowed
| parking areas makes it easier for everyone to follow the
| correct rules.
| adolph wrote:
| Do you have an rss feed of road rules piped into Anki
| cards or what?
|
| Or just maybe "driver's license is a privilege that
| requires you to study and know the rules of the road" is
| a fallacious claim that rests on pedantic legal formalism
| and an impoverished sense of human psychology.
| izacus wrote:
| How bizarre, this rule is enforced across most of EU
| without signage and somehow most people cope. Why
| wouldn't Americans?
| adolph wrote:
| It isn't bizarre that rules and practice vary widely in
| different cultural contexts. Even your claim is caveated
| as "most of EU," recognizing that it might not be the
| same in all places.
|
| In many places in the US, there is a culture of
| legibility, whereby informational affordances are
| relevantly and generously provisioned. This allows for
| more certainty for both facility users and rule
| enforcers. On the flip side, there are a lot of signs all
| over the place.
| whakim wrote:
| No, I don't; there are plenty of places you can't legally
| park that do not have painted curbs or "No Parking"
| signage. Do we also need curbs and signage near every
| fire hydrant? How about every driveway? Can drivers
| double-park anywhere they want? Should they yield to
| pedestrians in crosswalks? Etc. etc.
| adolph wrote:
| Reviewing the thread, the context is newly enforcing
| something that might not be illegal in all jurisdictions.
| Citing different contexts where signage is not always
| used doesn't change the fact that the discussion focuses
| on change in common practice in a specific context. In
| fact, I observe plenty of signage for fire hydrants and
| driveways in places where people commonly make parking
| errors.
|
| The question still stands. How do you ensure you detect
| changes rules of the road in order to maintain your
| privilege? >>>>>>> Where I live, many
| people park at intersections right up to the curb
| >>>>>> This is now illegal in some states >>>>>
| It's illegal in California but in San Francisco official
| policy is to not enforce this law. >>>>> If there's
| no red paint on the curb, they won't ticket you.
| >>>> It was ridiculous that they were originally
| proposing ticketing people without there being signage
| that it was illegal to park there. >>> Why? Having
| a driver's license is a privilege that requires you to
| study and know the rules of the road. >> Do you
| have an rss feed of road rules piped into Anki cards or
| what? > No, I don't; there are plenty of places you
| can't legally park that do not have painted curbs or "No
| Parking" signage.
| whakim wrote:
| You enforce them; if I get a ticket for parking at an
| intersection, I won't do it again!
|
| (Also, in the specific context of this discussion,
| parking restrictions near intersections are _super_
| common; this is not some esoteric new law that has been
| introduced. See
| https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-
| docume...)
| adolph wrote:
| Your claim was formerly "Having a driver's license is a
| privilege that requires you to study and know the rules
| of the road."
|
| Your claim is now tickets are the loss function for
| building one's road rule model? What happened to the
| requirement for study?
| brewdad wrote:
| Portland does the same thing since most blocks in the older
| parts of town are 200 feet. Reserving 20 feet at either end
| would take away a huge chunk of street parking in
| residential areas built before driveways were common.
|
| It's also why our light rail trains can only be two cars
| long.
| RyanOD wrote:
| Yes, it is illegal in Washington state and yet, people do it.
|
| Specifically, drivers who are "just running in" to grab a
| coffee or a pizza or whatever. What they don't understand is
| even a limited amount of time blocking the view of drivers
| can be catastrophic.
|
| Parking up to the corner of an intersection is just a really
| dangerous, selfish thing to do.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Hasn't this been illegal in all states since the beginning of
| traffic laws?
| buckle8017 wrote:
| This rule removed something like 10% of all parking spaces in
| SF.
| hk__2 wrote:
| In Paris, France, they are replacing all the car parking spaces
| near intersections with bike ones, which is a lot better for
| visibility. But that's a small-ish city where 65%+ of the
| population don't even own a car.
| kenmacd wrote:
| +11 and +4 seem check-digit-y
|
| From the limited dataset it looks the last digit comes from:
|
| last digit = (<sum of previous the digits> + 2) mod 7
| Aloisius wrote:
| It is a check digit, but it's just: n % 7.
|
| So ticket 98494660 has citation #984,946,605
|
| Ticket 98494661 will have citation #984,946,616
|
| (The example of the pattern mistakenly starts with an citation
| number #984,946,606 which they said does not exist, rather than
| #984,946,605 which is the one shown in the image)
| jonahx wrote:
| What's funny is secure IDs could have easily prevented this but,
| even if the city discovers it and wants to shut it down now, I'd
| bet actually fixing the system would be too costly (IDs tend to
| couple to everything).
| mulmen wrote:
| Just add a delay.
| odensc wrote:
| Pretty simple fix: require more data to look up a citation,
| like the number, issue date and plate/VIN (this is how my city
| does it). Technically doesn't make the scraping _impossible_ if
| you wanna try every permutation of a license plate, but makes
| it mostly infeasible.
|
| Currently it just requires the sequential citation number [1],
| which is how the data is being scraped so easily.
|
| [1]:
| https://wmq.etimspayments.com/pbw/include/sanfrancisco/input...
| edm0nd wrote:
| super easy fix
|
| just update all the tickets at the end of the day in one single
| batch / put time delay on the data
|
| renders the site useless instantly
| dcreater wrote:
| wow, great work. But is this legal? Feels like no and will be
| takendown
| Supercompressor wrote:
| FYI the ticketing time is showing incorrectly out of Pacific
| time, e.g. here in Eastern all recent activity shows as 3 hours
| ago. Not a big deal as almost all users would be in Pacific, but
| wanted to mention.
|
| Great work though, this is rad.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Probably a good time to tell people that SF operates a "Text
| Before Tow Program" where you can get a warning that you're about
| to get towed: https://www.sfmta.com/text-tow-program
| ihaveajob wrote:
| This is fantastic. It really signals that the point is not to
| get money from you, but to free up the parking spot.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| They also ticket without towing, where the point is entirely
| to get money from you.
| godelski wrote:
| Or to say "don't do this"
| arghwhat wrote:
| Where I'm from there's no concept of towing on any parking
| violations. No one has the right to touch your vehicle, and
| if the police is involved they'd just contact the owner.
| The police would only move a car if it's a danger to the
| public.
|
| A tow truck is only something you'd call for assistance,
| not something you fear seeing.
|
| (Parking fines suck, but the municipal ones are usually
| more reasonable here, even if they don't always get the
| rules right. It's the parking companies managing large
| private parking lots, often for free to the lot owner, that
| are absurd.)
| noahlt wrote:
| Where I'm from there's no concept of using public space
| to store your personal belongings without paying for it.
| ioasuncvinvaer wrote:
| What about e-scooters?
| arghwhat wrote:
| Care to elaborate, as that sounds rather extreme?
|
| I don't know of a country that requires all bicycle
| parking in any non-private location to be paid, nor a
| country that requires payment for roadside parking on
| country roads outside cities. Heck, even within cities,
| only the very dense ones seem to require paid parking on
| smaller roads.
|
| Public space does not imply _free of any use_ , but
| rather that it is _freely used by all_. The purpose of
| paid roadside parking is to reduce demand on what quickly
| becomes a limited resource in dense cities.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Towing makes perfect sense when a car is blocking access.
| Parked in front of driveways for example.
| arghwhat wrote:
| Here (Denmark), blocking a drive-way would not be a
| parking violation handled by a parking inspector, but a
| traffic violation handled by the police. They would
| contact you directly and have you sprint to your car.
|
| Parking tickets are also considered _fees_ , paid to
| those managing the parking area (municipality for public
| roads), as opposed to fines issued by the police or a
| judge and subject to very specific rules.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've seen news stories about cops impounding nearby
| Teslas if they think its cameras might have caught
| something related.
| karlgkk wrote:
| I've long believed that "first one free" would be a great way
| to help reduce the impact of tickets on people while still
| achieving the same goal
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Often it's unofficially the policy. For PT ticket fines in
| Melbourne, I've never heard of someone having a fine
| enforced for the first problem. It's pretty much always
| just a warning logged against you.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| They gave me a $50 discount on the ~$600 fee for getting
| towed in SF due to it being a first time violation. Not quite
| free, but I'll take it?
| sedatk wrote:
| > This service only applies to parking more than 72-hours,
| blocked driveway, construction, and temporary no-parking
| (special event or moving truck) zones. Peak-hour tow-away
| lanes, hazards, yellow or white zones and other violations are
| not included.
|
| Still great though. That would have saved me $500 6 years ago.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| It would have saved me $600 two weeks ago.
| truncate wrote:
| >> A tow truck will be dispatched in conjunction with the text
| message notification and could be there in as few as five
| minutes.
|
| If only they operate in good faith, and that is something I'd
| highly doubt given its SFMTA. As in they could call tow truck
| ahead of time, so that its almost unlikely the person will be
| able to get to their car in time.
| woah wrote:
| Why should roads, walkways, and construction sites be blocked
| just to let someone have more time to avoid a ticket? I
| imagine the text goes out from SF's servers simultaneously
| with the tow truck summons. It's a fair shot for both.
| truncate wrote:
| I totally agree with you on that, but then why have this
| program at first place then?
|
| I'm just saying that given its SFMTA -- if the tow truck
| will take say 30 min, they will probably try to wait and
| issue the ticket later right before tow truck can arrive so
| that they can get the fines. SFMTA relies heavily on fining
| people for their revenue and hence incentivized to not act
| on good faith here. Obviously, it an accusation based on
| anecdotes and personal experience and by no means an
| evidence, and I may very well be wrong, but overall I've
| very very little faith in SFMTA.
|
| >> I imagine the text goes out from SF's servers
| simultaneously with the tow truck. These systems are often
| old. I wouldn't assume anything here.
| mulmen wrote:
| If they really want to free up the spot there's a good
| chance the driver is closer than the tow truck.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| What does the city care? Whether it gets towed or moved by
| the owner it's still gone
| truncate wrote:
| Fines are big source of revenue for MTA. Citation would be
| $110 something, and if it gets towed its additional $700
| for first X hours and then more later.
| hopelite wrote:
| The OP example ticket in his info is for something like
| $480
| truncate wrote:
| There is citation fine + tow fee + administrative fee +
| storage fee.
|
| https://www.sfmta.com/getting-around/drive-park/towed-
| vehicl...
| dinkblam wrote:
| can you find out how much revenue the city makes each week with
| those tickets?
| primitivesuave wrote:
| No - you would have to file a FOIA request with the SFMTA, and
| then tabulate the "Total Paid" column in the response files.
| Below is my FOIA request template for the SFMTA [1] to assist
| anyone who is interested in doing this.
|
| > Please provide all possible information on all parking
| citations issued between 2009 and the present day. This should
| include any information related to the car (make, etc), license
| plate, ticket, ticketer, ticket reason(s), financial
| information (paid, etc), court information (contested, etc),
| situational (eg, time, location), and photos/videos.
| Specifically, please provide the most recent data from the
| dataset I have received in past FOIA requests, with the
| following headers:
|
| > Issue Year, Ticket Number, Tick Issue Date, Tick Issue Time,
| Agency, Tick Badge Issued, Veh Make, Veh Body, Tick VIN, Tick
| RP State, Tick RP Plate, Plate Exp Date, Violation, Violation
| Desc, Tick Meter, Tick Street No, Tick Street Name, Suspend
| Code, Suspend Desc, Tick Suspend Date, Tick Dispo Code, Tick
| Dispo Desc, Tick Dispo Date Total Paid, Total Amt Due
|
| 1. https://www.sfmta.com/public-records-requests
| geor9e wrote:
| You can look at the leaderboard at the end of the day and sum
| the daily intake if you want.
| 1zael wrote:
| I'm missing something here. How did you get the dataset for this?
| And that too, in real-time?
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| https://walzr.com/sf-parking/about/
| 1zael wrote:
| ahh thank you!
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Explained here
|
| https://walzr.com/sf-parking/about/
| 1zael wrote:
| ahh thank you!
| vanshg wrote:
| Explained here: https://walzr.com/sf-parking/about/
| assemmedhat wrote:
| Awesome. The leading officer in the dashboard should have a raise
| :)
| alexchantavy wrote:
| Oh wow this is from the same author as https://walzr.com/bop-
| spotter -- love these projects
| rconti wrote:
| I knew that domain name (which is blocked at work, for some
| reason) sounded familiar.
|
| So wait.
|
| cop-spotter is brought to you by the people who brought you
| bop-spotter?
| beeb wrote:
| dop-spotter is next
| rconti wrote:
| That's easy, it'll mostly highlight North Beach[1]
|
| 1. https://italysegreta.com/dop-ingredients-of-neapolitan-
| pizza...
| ericcumbee wrote:
| Hold for wap-spotter
| barbazoo wrote:
| Odd detail about the page, on the left it says "Audio feed
| courtesy of Orchestra" but the link goes to some dystopian
| panopticon kinda surveillance app.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| I think they're being cheeky. I assume Orchestra is the
| dystopian company providing the "ShotSpotter" service to SF,
| and bop spotter is piggy backing on the api.
| galaxy_gas wrote:
| They are separate dystopian that have public video and
| audio feed of SF on front page 4K
|
| Shotspotter not related co.
| montag wrote:
| Good Lord this is cool, gorgeous Nokia UI
| _giorgio_ wrote:
| In interested in the hardware part. A microphone constantly
| listening. Not for the microphone, but for the IP protection,
| batteries etc
| Jolter wrote:
| Edit: apparently it's not running its own hardware. It's
| piggybacking on some business called Orchestra?
| input_sh wrote:
| It's a parody of a business.
| https://orchestraos.com/privacy
| samtheDamned wrote:
| Oh I remember this website nice to be reminded of this!
| Ancapistani wrote:
| This is kinda taking me aback a bit :).
|
| I live in a small town (<15k), with the nearest city of 100k
| people or more several hours away. Having this degree of detail
| and low latency is impressive.
|
| I happen to be in SF right now on business, and walked outside.
| There was an officer about a block away, right where the map said
| they were ~10m ago.
| smurda wrote:
| This is why the internet and HN should exist <3
| Simulacra wrote:
| Fascinating and good to see enforcement actually occuring
| thatguymike wrote:
| This is great. Watch them take the data down in 3, 2, 1...
|
| Until then I'd love to see trails of where the traffic enforcers
| have been on the main map, it would make the map more engaging.
| Alive-in-2025 wrote:
| Excellent idea. Data trails would really show you have are
| walking their beat. So the obvious next step is randomizing the
| IDs of the ticket writers.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| It's down.
| hk__2 wrote:
| It's up again.
| ProofHouse wrote:
| Can the city just keep the top five and fire the rest, you know
| tax savings lol although I'd get a parking ticket, surely
| hobofan wrote:
| Not sure if there are any tax savings to be had. Even the 100th
| place on the leaderboard netted $2k in a half day of working,
| so I think every single one of them may provide positive income
| for the city.
| hnav wrote:
| traffic enforcement is pretty much the only cashflow positive
| city business
| neilv wrote:
| Let's say that some people are _opposed_ to the city 's
| enforcement of parking rules against them (people who don't want
| parking tickets for overstaying in a spot, nor for parking
| somewhere they aren't supposed to).
|
| Let's also say that some other people _support_ the enforcement
| against that first group (e.g., small brick &mortar businesses,
| and people who want more parking available for quick errands).
|
| If the Opposed group uses big data to work around the
| enforcement, does that hurt the Supports group?
|
| What's fair in that situation?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Who used big data first, who uses big data more, who has more
| big data to work with, who has big data they get to keep to
| themselves and who has to work with only big data that both
| have the same access to?
|
| F this supposed see the other side question.
| bko wrote:
| San Francisco has a system for reporting parking violations.
| Residents can report illegal parking such as blocked driveways,
| sidewalk obstructions, double parking, and abandoned vehicles
| through the city's SF311 platform.
|
| You can make a report on the 311 website, mobile app, or by
| calling 311. You receive a tracking number to monitor the
| response.
|
| https://www.sf.gov/departments--311-customer-service-center
| threatofrain wrote:
| Opposition must come through legal means, because the cheapness
| and omnipresence of enforcement is only getting better,
| especially for SFPD on the tech front.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Just charge market rates for land.
|
| Overstaying (aka overconsumption) is mostly just a predictable
| consequence of selling something valuable at far below what its
| value.
| nick49488171 wrote:
| Ah yes, the free market, which tends to always work in favor
| of the majority of people and common good.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| The people own the land and as such, deserve to receive
| it's full value. Charging $0 is stealing from the people to
| give to car drivers.
| davmre wrote:
| Even if you charge $10/hr, or whatever the market rate would
| be for street parking spots, you still need an enforcement
| mechanism to prevent people overstaying.
|
| In general, the idea of a "market rate" for any given
| property depends fundamentally on a system of property rights
| actually being enforced.
| cellis wrote:
| Market rate is $4.10 per hour during peak hours. But it
| falls off precipitously per hour and ceases to be enforced
| around 6pm. For overstays those little white golf cart
| trucks have cameras that check license plates for permits.
| I recently got a parking permit for $200 or so after paying
| like $500 in tickets for various infractions including
| "Parking on Grades, wheels straight". So I very much want
| anyone overstaying a 2hr parking spot to get tickets and or
| towed to make room. And I can speak from experience having
| just recently being towed, that the parking downtown is
| ruthlessly enforced. It will cost you about $700 if you're
| towed.
| carlob wrote:
| I've always wondered what the market rate for parking would
| be if you allowed for things other than parking like
| restaurant tables, a shed, a tiny skyscraper...
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Exactly. It's not much of a market if 99% of potential
| uses of the land are prohibited.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| Perhaps the overconsumption is on the businesses that have no
| parking infrastructure for their customers, relying on street
| parking instead. What if there was no street parking allowed
| at all? It's probably too late to implement this idea, but
| interesting to think about.
| ripley12 wrote:
| That's more or less how Tokyo works. Almost no on-street
| parking, people have to prove that they have a parking spot
| when buying a car, liberal zoning so there are lots of very
| small pay parking lots around the city. It works really
| well IMO but it would be politically very difficult in
| North America.
| godelski wrote:
| Quality public transportation
|
| I don't mean just having public transport but make it be
| something people actually want to use. It has to be cheap,
| convenient, and useful. But even in the Bay these aren't all
| met. It can be hard to get to some places or quality can go
| down hill real quick.
|
| I think there's these problems which are really self
| reinforcing. You don't build public transportation because no
| one uses it. No one uses it because it doesn't actually meet
| their needs. You don't maintain it because use usage is
| dropping but usage is decreasing because it's not maintained.
|
| Then you have these external costs that are easy to ignore
| because you over simplify and think they are out of scope. Like
| you have to have more parking spaces for more cars. Less green
| spaces. This all raises the cost of the real estate. So on and
| so on. There's more complexity than we often think and we
| should start with our simplifications but to improve we need to
| consider the complexities we initially ignored
| morkalork wrote:
| Hey @OP, make a leader board for the license plate with the most
| infractions
| obventio56 wrote:
| I would pay ~$10/month for email alerts when an officer is within
| a geofence of my car.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Then someone will know where your car is at all times, and
| probably who you are... and that is monetizable (not from you).
| Zigurd wrote:
| Google maps is free to use so obviously I'm the product
| Google sells. I'd say I'm getting a fair deal letting "them"
| track my location. (Why does nobody ever complain about them
| insisting on gender neutral pronouns? They must be very
| powerful.)
| runjake wrote:
| Often times, even if you pay, you're _still_ the product a
| company sells.
| jaggederest wrote:
| If you do not believe that is already true on multiple axes,
| you are probably mistaken. The combination of automated
| license plate scanners, phone beacon data, and behavioral
| metrics make that relatively straightforward to get, in
| aggregate.
|
| I worked on a project where we could tell how many users were
| in a given store at a time (historically, not realtime) based
| on wifi traces, mobile data aggregation from carriers, and
| bluetooth pings. We could generally back it up to even
| general demographic data like how much disposable income the
| users were likely to have. Interesting project, deeply
| worrying how much data is running around out there.
| obventio56 wrote:
| If there is someone who wants this data, I am happy to
| sell... no need for a middle man.
| AngryData wrote:
| Someone probably already does. Every car sold within the last
| 20 years has tracking electronics and can be remotely
| crippled or shut down.
| giarc wrote:
| Officer 0438 appears to have begun his shift in Guadalajara
|
| https://imgur.com/a/u4hg8DS
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| Appears to have been given on 3 El Dorado South, San Francisco.
| The map marker shows a street called Avenida South San
| Francisco, Mexico, in front of a bar called El Dorado.
| supportengineer wrote:
| It's quite common for Bay Area workers to have a "supercommute"
| RS-232 wrote:
| Don't give ICE any ideas!
| madamelic wrote:
| Oh my god. A $107 ticket for an EXPIRED METER?!
|
| That's insanity. Turns out more than just thieves are thieves
| in SF.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| How are you handling the auth token/captcha on the website? I'm
| not a legal expert, but my impression is that automated solving
| of captchas during a scrape carries higher risk. That said,
| amazing project!
| devadvance wrote:
| Very cool! There are a ton of opportunities like this with SF
| systems!
|
| For folks wondering about the public nature of this data: SFMTA
| separately publishes a full data set daily:
| https://data.sfgov.org/Transportation/SFMTA-Parking-Citation...
| lavela wrote:
| Great implementation but reading the comments I wonder if there
| is really no sense of the streets as a commons you should use
| responsibly at all in the US.
|
| Not that I am not annoyed by parking tickets, but I am also
| thankful for the enforcement when I use any means of moving
| through the city other than a car and at least where I live
| parking violations are really under-enforced. Maybe that's the
| difference in San Francisco?
| hnav wrote:
| Very little of that anywhere in the country, especially when
| it's the rights of drivers vs other road users. San Francisco
| is a bit better but gets bad when it goes through its boom
| cycles that bring lots of people in.
| smegma2 wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment but I want to point out that a car
| is not essential for most people living in SF, although many
| people outside the city think this. Around 35% of households
| don't have a car:
| https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
| nick_ wrote:
| Nope, same in Toronto. Same everywhere I've been. Drivers all
| mentally turn into teenagers when it comes to anything to do
| with driving/parking. I'm very pro traffic and parking
| enforcement.
| PpEY4fu85hkQpn wrote:
| Cars turn people into sociopaths.
| bfrink wrote:
| Seems that something's been broken. The normal way to look up
| ticket images manually at https://wmq.etimspayments.com/ no
| longer works, returning "Unauthorized" even after properly
| getting past the CAPTCHA.
| geor9e wrote:
| "each possible ticket number follows a pattern: add 11, except
| add 4 if the last digit is 6...Only God knows why"
|
| That pattern feels suspiciously like how a tacked-on modulo
| check-digit would act.
|
| It seems the real citation number, x, excludes the last digit,
| and you only needed to +1 increment to it.
|
| Then they tack on a last digit, a check-digit, of (x+1) mod 7.
| That would be the same pattern.
|
| The contract for the system does have the clause "validate the
| data transcribed from handwritten Citations...a check-digit
| algorithm to control errors in the Citation number field"
| https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-docume...
| refurb wrote:
| Nice observation!
| Aloisius wrote:
| It's just x % 7.
|
| They started their example pattern with an citation number
| 984,946,606 they earlier said wasn't valid rather than
| 984,946,605 given initially (and shown in the image).
| pertsix wrote:
| But why?
| Aloisius wrote:
| Just a mistake, I imagine. Probably just typed the pattern
| out starting with the last number they wrote, which
| unfortunately was invalid.
|
| _> I was looking at ticket 984,946,605. When I type in 1
| higher, 984,946,606, no ticket is found. ... So the ticket
| after 984,946,606 is actually 984,946,610_
| dragontamer wrote:
| Because it means that 85.7% of all mistakes will be caught
| by very simple software checks before getting to your
| system. (85.7% == 6/7).
|
| Check digits in your userdata is an old trick and is very
| useful in practice. Maybe modern systems should aim for
| something better than %7 but it's a good starting point as
| a system design concept.
| xvedejas wrote:
| In college we discovered everyone's ID number was evenly
| divisible by 13. Presumably it's because that's the smallest
| number you'd need so that you could detect any one digit being
| incorrect, or two adjacent digits being swapped (I think?). Or
| that it's just very easy to implement the increment when
| assigning new numbers.
| nielsole wrote:
| Isn't 11 the smallest divisor that gives those guarantees?
| consp wrote:
| It's what quite a few banks used to use as a check digit,
| maybe that where you remember it from. But it depends on
| the size of the number you want to verify and exactly what
| system is employed. Lots of banks used 9 or 10 digit
| numbers which worked with a "11 check". Nine was also often
| used on smaller numbers.
|
| You can use any prime afaik for this example but your
| number space will be limited.
| andruby wrote:
| For 2 digit checks it's often mod 97 (largest prime <
| 100) because it can detect all single-digit errors and
| most adjacent digit transpositions.
|
| Used in IBAN bank account numbers, EU VAT numbers (UK,
| FR, BE), etc
| cramcgrab wrote:
| Division I, Section 7.3.3 Obstruction of Traffic Without Permit
| $1,000.00
|
| "officer, I've got a permit to obstruct traffic!"
| zacharycohn wrote:
| Yes, things like street closures for construction, film shoots,
| or Neighborhood Night Outs would all need permits to obstruct
| traffic/close the street.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Fun fact: as a regular citizen you can apply for such a
| permit online. I did this when we were moving houses to
| ensure the entire block in front of our house would be clear
| of cars (or we could tow if required) to make it possible to
| get a moving truck in on the one-lane street where double-
| parking would block all access. I filled out the forms. A
| week or so later the city dropped signs on the sidewalk
| warning of the upcoming closure.
|
| You can also close your entire street for a block party. You
| just need a certain number of people on your block to sign
| the form approving it.
| varenc wrote:
| site now offline:
|
| > In rare lightning speed, the SF government changed their site
| within hours of this site going live. I can't get data from it
| anymore.
| nomagicbullet wrote:
| > RIP > In rare lightning speed, the SF government changed their
| site within hours of this site going live. I can't get data from
| it anymore.
|
| That was fast! I missed it.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| If you are happy with fewer columns and 5-day-old data, you can
| find it here: https://data.sfgov.org/Transportation/SFMTA-
| Parking-Citation...
| larkinrichards wrote:
| offline now. It's a reasonable to expect that this information
| should not be available in real time to protect parking officers.
| It's already published daily, as mentioned in other comments.
| drstewart wrote:
| Funny, people don't think it was reasonable for the FAA to do
| the same with protecting private citizens travel data
| malux85 wrote:
| In my early career NZ traffic cops used to walk around with a
| Bluetooth printer strapped to their belt, that would print the
| tickets.
|
| I purchased a long range (I think 400m) Bluetooth dongle and with
| a bit of bash scripting we could continuously sweep the local
| area and then go out and move our cars, we tried pairing to the
| printers too but they had passkeys and we couldn't, but they
| still had whatever broadcasting was active so we could at least
| detect them.
| xg15 wrote:
| Misread as "parking coops" and thought this was some interesting
| new concept of community-owned parking lots.
| ndgold wrote:
| So incredibly cool I want this
| nodesocket wrote:
| $105 fine for street cleaning violation? What an absolute racket
| for the city. I used to live near Union Square 7+ years ago and
| left for greener pastures in the south. So glad I left when I
| did.
| aendruk wrote:
| > In rare lightning speed, the SF government changed their site
| within hours of this site going live. I can't get data from it
| anymore.
|
| Anyone have a screenshot?
| rimbo789 wrote:
| There should be a tracker on all cars that automatically charges
| them a fee when they stop on public land for longer than a
| traffic light. You get mailed the bill monthly. Fail to pay you
| lose your license.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Tolled roads? Oh yes. With surge pricing? Ah fuck yeah. Come
| on!
| xbar wrote:
| It was great while it lasted.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| I gotta say, it's incredibly inconsiderate and thoughtless to
| publish the real time location of a bunch of public safety
| officers in an individually identifiable way.
|
| I understand the sentiment, and I appreciate the hackery... but
| you put these people at risk today. You need to think much more
| carefully about how you approach things like this in the future.
| dymk wrote:
| I'm playing the world's smallest violin for those poor parking
| enforcement officers
| blactuary wrote:
| Parking enforcement is unequivocally good and these people
| are not regular cops
| RS-232 wrote:
| I disagree. There should be no expectation of privacy for any
| public officer. Things like this website, body cameras, and
| FOIA requests are all for the public good. Expose corruption
| and keep everyone safer with a little accountability.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| That's a false dichotomy.
|
| There is a world difference between everything you mentioned,
| and publishing the real time locations of officers by their
| actual name (initials) on a website anybody can visit.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There should be no expectation of privacy for any public
| officer.
|
| So live public webcams in the employee restrooms in all
| government buildings?
|
| I would argue that public officers would retain personal
| privacy, but that such privacy cannot be a shield against the
| public for the government concealing substantive operations,
| and that the identity of public officers and the substantive
| means by which they are engaged in the exercise of public
| functions, are therefore not within the space of their
| personal privacy.
| RS-232 wrote:
| While personal privacy may be preserved outside the scope
| of public acts, an individual who, in the execution of
| official duties, operates vehicles displaying lights or
| sirens and wears official identification inherently waives
| any claim to geospatial privacy.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| I dunno, I don't think we should publish the real-time
| location of guards protecting sensitive government
| locations.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Oh, there's no need. They leak that themselves!
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-
| tracki...
|
| https://apnews.com/article/biden-trump-macron-bodyguards-
| sec...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Accountability in terms of what has happened _in the past_ ,
| yes.
|
| But the idea that _current public locations_ of identifiable
| public officers is not justifiable at all.
|
| That would be allowing individuals to be stalked in real
| time. That's not OK.
| itake wrote:
| They are operating in public. They shouldn't have
| expectations of privacy.
|
| Are you against ICE agent tracking apps as well?
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean it's only fair, I would prefer that both ordinary
| people and public officials were granted privacy in
| public spaces, but we don't so they don't.
|
| Citizens can't hold public officials accountable when
| they're only accountable to other public officials.
| crazygringo wrote:
| There's a difference between being in public and being
| tracked.
|
| Of course they don't have expectations of privacy in
| terms of people being able to e.g. take photos or videos
| of them. The same way people can take photos of you or
| me.
|
| But broadcasting someone's real-time location to the
| whole world all day long, in real time, is something else
| entirely. That has never been considered part of being in
| public. That's targeted surveillance, which is very, very
| different.
| greyface- wrote:
| It should be noted that SFMTA, the alleged victim of this
| website, uses a network of 400+ Flock ALPR cameras to
| track the movement of every vehicle in the region.
| They're able to do this not because of some special
| agency authority, but because it's legal for anyone to
| surveil public areas.
| what wrote:
| How is that relevant? Do they publish the exact location
| of every vehicle in real time?
| dymk wrote:
| They keep that data for themselves, they don't even tell
| you how much data they have on you.
|
| Why is it unfair that they also be tracked?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| It might be fair, but is it a good idea? What you are
| doing is justifying something you wouldn't agree with
| because it targets people belonging to an organization
| doing the thing you don't agree with. That is can be
| problematic because
|
| 1. They now can say 'well it is done to us why can't we
| do it to others' instead of engaging with real arguments
| about using ALPR flock cameras to track people
|
| 2. You assume that a person working for an organization
| is automatically complicit in the decisions of that
| organization and is therefore fair to be targeted by
| systems you don't want targeted at yourself -- this is
| fine when in war or other struggles deemed worthy of
| placing aside normal human morality temporarily, but is
| this one of those?
|
| 3. This type of thing can turn into a race to the bottom
| where each side escalates compromises of their basic
| value systems
| dymk wrote:
| The police as an organization do not care about engaging
| with you in good faith and are far past a race to the
| bottom regarding surveillance.
| hooverd wrote:
| Well, maybe they shouldn't either?
| hopelite wrote:
| How do you think these public officials with massive
| paychecks and life long massive pensions operate; they
| drive around in the most noticeable little vehicles that
| you can spot from a mile away. If you needed to track
| them for some reason you would just follow them, and most
| likely people in the neighborhood probably already know
| their routes anyways.
|
| It seems you are fixated on something you just can't let
| go, as if these are some kind of undercover agents
| selling kidnapped and trafficked young children and he's
| blowing their cover ... they're writing traffic tickets
| off $480 dollars ... the least we spoiled be able to do
| is track the public official while they're writing
| excessive fines.
| jjcob wrote:
| If you park your car on a bus stop, you deserve that
| fine. I wish my city fine like this.
| lokar wrote:
| And if you park blocking bike lane?
| Epa095 wrote:
| Massive paycheck? Feel free to apply yourself
| https://careers.sf.gov/classifications/?classCode=8214
|
| I dont know how far 70-100k goes in SF, but accoriding to
| https://www.livingwage-sf.org/living-wage-calculator/ it
| is barely enough for a single adult, but you better not
| have a child!
| hopelite wrote:
| What the cost of living inside SF is, is irrelevant to
| the matter. As city employees they also have other
| benefits related to commuting and no one makes them
| commute into the city for that job that pays at minimum
| $70k and up to $100k in a country where the average wage
| is $39k...the average...and it is for *checks notes*
| driving around, looking, and pushing buttons all day.
|
| You seem to lack perspective, probably because as most
| here, we all likely make well above what the average
| person makes around us. It can be forgiven as ignorance,
| but it's the same thing as the people around me who are
| worth 9+ figures who flatter their multiple staff with
| all kinds of pleasantries and benefits while paying them
| 6 figure salaries out of an odd poorly understood "guilt"
| or something that is prevalent among those who are better
| off than others.
|
| I get your point, but reality is that under no objective
| perspective is $100k a bad income for what they do,
| especially since those "officers" pull in $90 million per
| year in citations.
|
| But to answer your question, no, you will not be living
| in Sea Cliff on even $100k, but seriously, let's put into
| perspective what someone who drives around, looks, and
| then pushes buttons to print out a paper should be
| making. How many other people could be doing that job. I
| guarantee that it's not even a competitive position that
| hires in the best interest of the public.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You seem to be the one lacking not just perspective but
| correct facts.
|
| > _for that job that pays at minimum $70k and up to $100k
| in a country where the average wage is $39k...the
| average..._
|
| Where are you getting an average of $39k from? The OECD
| lists 2024 US average salary as $82,933 [1].
|
| So this is a job that pays from less than average to a
| bit more than average _nationally_.
|
| _But_ , the mean hourly wage in San Francisco is $48.15
| [2], which is slightly over $100K annually. Which makes
| it a job that pays from well below average to average at
| best.
|
| > _and it is for *checks notes* driving around, looking,
| and pushing buttons all day._
|
| You clearly have no concept of the kinds of dangerous
| physical encounters cops have with scary, crazy,
| threatening, lunatic people on a regular basis.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_av
| erage_w...
|
| [2] https://www.bls.gov/regions/west/news-
| release/occupationalem...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > You clearly have no concept of the kinds of dangerous
| physical encounters cops have with scary, crazy,
| threatening, lunatic people on a regular basis.
|
| Parking enforcement people are not police officers, nor
| do they have any of the powers of one.
| Aachen wrote:
| > Of course they don't have expectations of privacy in
| terms of people being able to e.g. take photos or videos
| of them. The same way people can take photos of you or
| me.
|
| Might be a culture difference with europe but I find it
| rude if someone would take a picture of me without
| asking. I can think of few purposes (stalking, facial
| recognition training or tracking, sharing in a chat group
| to make fun of) that you can do with a picture of a
| random person on the street that you'd not get permission
| for when you're required to ask
|
| It's always a balance: if someone wants to do it for
| legal reasons (I just stole their purse and am running
| away) that's very different. There's almost no law that
| works absolutely anyway, there can very often be
| overriding reasons that are already defined in the law
| (or another law) or that a judge will accept. Just
| talking about the default case
| crazygringo wrote:
| Of course it's rude. But we don't criminalize behavior
| that is merely rude. It's rude to swear at someone or
| fart in their direction too.
|
| In public, US courts have established you do not have a
| reasonable expectation of privacy. Because you're in
| public. Someone can take photos or videos of you, whether
| you're in the background or whether they're zooming in on
| your face.
|
| Obviously if you're getting right up in their face and
| refusing to go away, that turns into harassment and you
| can call the cops. But it doesn't matter if you're using
| a camera or not.
| throwmeaway222 wrote:
| So take this to the maximum, lets say in 30 years
| (honestly probably a lot sooner) - should police have
| trackers on them that give YOU accurate up to the second
| 3d/GPS location of all of them and done in an app that's
| attached to a drone that shoots people. Since they are in
| public this is the obvious thing you're looking for.
| repeekad wrote:
| Keep in mind the site doesn't track officers in real
| time, it reports the last location and timestamp of a
| ticket.
|
| Realtime police officer location data would interfere
| with arrests and investigation, but realtime reporting of
| incidents is critical public data that shouldn't be fear
| mongered away.
|
| If officers giving tickets are in fear of their life,
| taking down a tracking website isn't the change that
| keeps them safe...
| throwmeaway222 wrote:
| I'm trying to show how people on here are saying because
| someone is in the public we are owed exact xyz location
| data of said person is fucking ridiculous.
| Wurdan wrote:
| If you don't think this tool poses any risk to these
| people let's try walk through a scenario.
|
| Let's say someone sees a parking warden they find
| physically attractive. They follow them for a bit and
| when they write up their next ticket, the stalker pulls
| up this app to get the officer's ID. The next day they
| pull up the app to see where the warden is working that
| day - they drive over there, and it takes them maybe half
| an hour to find the warden based on the lag between last-
| ticket-location and real-time-location. They strike up a
| creepy conversation and the parking warden eventually
| leaves, disturbed. The next day, the parking warden is
| working a night shift - they've been told to patrol a
| dark neighborhood where there are plenty of alleyways
| that nobody can see into...
|
| See where I'm going with this?
|
| Anything which allows someone to get ongoing location
| data for a person who they've just come across on the
| street is inherently a danger to the surveilled person.
| abduhl wrote:
| This is a wild hypothetical that tries to blame a tool
| for the problem of a user. Won't anyone think of the
| children?
|
| Let's modify your post to highlight the absurdity:
|
| Let's say someone sees a parking warden they find
| physically attractive. They follow them for a bit in
| their car and when they write up their last ticket, the
| stalker gets in their car and follows the officer back to
| the station and then to their home. The next day they
| pull up to the warden's house and follow them to see
| where the warden is working that day - they drive over
| there. They strike up a creepy conversation and the
| parking warden eventually leaves, disturbed. The next
| day, the parking warden is working a night shift -
| they've been told to patrol a dark neighborhood where
| there are plenty of alleyways that nobody can see into...
|
| See where I'm going with this?
|
| Anything which allows someone to follow a person in a
| vehicle who they've just come across on the street is
| inherently a danger to the surveilled person.
| Wurdan wrote:
| There's a gigantic difference in the ability of the
| surveilled person to protect themselves in the scenario
| you sketch versus the one that I sketch. In your scenario
| the surveilled person has a chance of noticing the fact
| that somebody is physically following them. And when they
| have eyes on the stalker, they can call the police to
| come and address the situation when they predict the
| stalker might escalate.
|
| In the scenario that I sketch, the stalker runs zero risk
| while obtaining the information. Hell, they don't even
| have to log in to this tool, so there's zero record of
| who accessed location information for which parking
| warden.
|
| And yes, it is absolutely incumbent upon the creators of
| tools to take into account how they might be misused. To
| pretend that all humans are of right mind and incapable
| of doing harm and only design for the case of ethical use
| is laughably naive.
| abduhl wrote:
| What a strange line to draw when in both hypothetical
| scenarios the stalker actively engages in a creepy
| conversation with the target before "you see where I'm
| going with this?" happens.
| Aachen wrote:
| For anyone else looking for which of these 200 words are
| actually different, this second post follows the person
| home instead of using the tracking website method
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That's the example you run toward?
|
| More likely someone gets a ticket that's bullshit, winds
| up paying, and this happens enough that they have their
| buddy wait for the person and throw a brick at them or
| something.
| rocqua wrote:
| Tracking enforcement officials decreases their ability to
| enforce and makes them easier to target.
|
| ICE agents shouldn't be doing their enforcement. Deserve
| to be targeted, and given there is very little
| transparency to their actions, anything to check their
| actions is an improvement.
|
| SF parking cops are not evil, operate transparently, and
| limiting their capability to enforce is not important to
| keep rule of law applicable.
|
| Public officer tracking apps can be okay, but only if you
| deem those public officers to be severely lacking in
| public oversight, and massively overreaching in their
| enforcement.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Tracking enforcement officials decreases their ability
| to enforce and makes them easier to target.
|
| Why is that a bad thing? God forbid the enforcers only
| have the effective power to enforce where there is
| sufficient local support that they feel safe doing so.
| Sounds like a pretty effective check on power to me.
|
| There was a case in my city a few years ago where the
| state police pulled someone over, found the passenger had
| weed on his person was in the process of arresting him
| but had to abort and he fled on foot because they
| initiated the stop in a supermarket parking lot at a busy
| time and the passers by were numerous and displeased
| enough the officers felt unsafe.
|
| I get that people get their panties in a knot over the
| idea that the government might have less practical
| ability to enforce petty civil nuisance stuff like
| parking but the flip side of this is that when you need
| serious resource investment to do things people don't
| like (like arresting weed dealers, ICE raids, etc), you
| do a lot less of it. And that's a tradeoff that I think
| is very worth making.
| utopcell wrote:
| It should be the city's responsibility to add a hysteresis
| to the reported data; perhaps this was already there.
| notatoad wrote:
| there is no public good afforded by violating parking
| restrictions. the public good comes from enforcing them, so
| that parking spaces turn over quickly and remain as available
| as possible.
|
| circumvention of the rules for a priveleged few (like those
| who know how to surveil the enforcement officers) is actual
| corruption. this service doesn't expose corruption, it
| enables it.
| eru wrote:
| I have some sympathies for your argument, but I suspect you
| are trying to prove too much: your argument could more or
| less justify an infinitely large fee for parking violations
| (or even imprisonment). Most people seem happier with
| small, finite amounts for these things?
|
| As a second point, I don't think parking and public goods
| have anything in common. Parking is _not_ a public good,
| and shouldn't be treated as such. Parking spaces are
| rivalrous and excludable. (See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good for the
| background.) They should be provided by the private market
| just as any other good and service, instead of being
| heavily regulated and partially being provided free-to-the-
| user at the cost of tax payers and business owners.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| How did you go from an argument for enforcing parking
| laws to infinite fees and imprisonment? Where is there
| such a parking law?
| bobanrocky wrote:
| Thats a silly observation. Reasonable privacy is a reasonable
| expectation for anyone in the US.
| throwmeaway222 wrote:
| Then you should also have no problem with an app that helps
| people spot and identify people that break into cars, imo a
| much larger problem in SF than parking spot thieves.
| varenc wrote:
| > There should be no expectation of privacy for any public
| officer
|
| It's worth noting that SF Parking Control Officers aren't
| "police" by most any definition. They're not sworn, and they
| don't qualify as peace officers under California law. They
| can't execute warrants, make arrests, or carry firearms, etc.
| They work under the San Francisco Municipal Transportation
| Agency (SFMTA), not the SFPD.
|
| Their enforcement powers are limited to issuing parking
| citations, ordering tows, and directing traffic. About the
| only thing they share with actual police is the word
| "Officer" in the job title. Tracking these folks is about
| equivalent to tracking individual USPS employees.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| > tracking USPS employees
|
| ... that actually also sounds useful
|
| i don't see why they shouldnt be tracked while working
| varenc wrote:
| Tracking the location of the truck delivering your
| package sounds pretty useful. And UPS/Amazon already do
| this. But publishing the individual personal location of
| each of the 500,000 USPS employees in real-time while
| they're working... is a bit different.
| e_y_ wrote:
| If we're talking about public tracking: package theft
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| Uhhh... Seems like the problem to address is crime? It's
| kinda crazy what kind of third world shit people just
| accept as normal now
| Leszek wrote:
| Ok, person with anonymous account name.
| KingNoosh wrote:
| I find it hilarious that people are arguing against a
| person w/ your using w/ the word being contrarian w/ you
| being contrarian right now ahahaha.
|
| People it seems have stopped wanting for fix or reform
| the system.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| If you track them while working you'll focus on hourly
| productivity rather than annual productivity and customer
| satisfaction. My postman has literal love letters by
| children written on houses on the block, makes sure you
| never loose any important documents, and so generally
| amazing, and I'm sure if you looked at his << number of
| houses per hour >> metric it'd look bad.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They work under the San Francisco Municipal
| Transportation Agency (SFMTA), not the SFPD.
|
| The other points are valid, but note that California's main
| general purpose state police force (CHP, which also
| absorbed the named-as-such State Police in 1995) is part of
| the State Transportation Agency, so being organizationally
| subordinated to a transportation agency is not really
| evidence of not being "police" in the normal sense.
| Aachen wrote:
| Any public officer, so also the spies you have in Russia, the
| investigators on murder cases, really everyone should have no
| privacy whatsoever in your mind?
| Barbing wrote:
| Thank you for thinking about the safety of our neighbors.
|
| May I ask whether you've considered the unique vehicles the
| parking enforcement agents use?
|
| SFMTA is hard to miss in their 3-wheelers--believe it's the
| Westward Industries "GO-4" Interceptor. I may have a blind spot
| here (like someone with access to an armed drone fleet could
| have made use of the map?), but essentially all private
| citizens will see these unmistakable three-wheelers simply by
| opening their front doors or heading downtown. Or into most any
| neighborhood.
|
| For others reading this besides you, what additional safety
| burden could be presented by this map which is absent simply
| with any of the 800,000 pairs of human eyeballs in SF? (Here to
| learn, no snark!)
| varenc wrote:
| The 800,000 pairs of human eyeballs aren't hooked up to a
| public real-time reporting system? Functionally, this is
| pretty different. Could argue either way.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| The website enabled stalking individual city employees by
| their initials in real time.
|
| If it just showed where the cars were, that would be much
| better. Although still questionable IMHO.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Loudly publishing the information at least got the city to
| stop quietly publishing the information.
| jcalvinowens wrote:
| You're not wrong. But serving it up on a silver platter
| in a pretty UI that got a lot of press was probably not
| necessary to make that happen.
| Barbing wrote:
| Initial thought: That doesn't sound great.
|
| Thank you!
| greesil wrote:
| Tut tut. What's the threat model?
| neilv wrote:
| I agree. And we should also be similarly conscientious about
| the privacy of everyone else as well.
|
| (Even though respecting privacy would mean that a massive
| number of HN techbros would quickly be unemployed.)
| EasyMark wrote:
| We'd probably care if they weren't tracking us whenever they
| get a chance.
| notJim wrote:
| You think the SF parking enforcement agency is tracking
| everyone?! That's one of the wilder conspiracy theories I've
| heard recently.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Most states have a public real time map showing snow plow
| locations. Ask yourself why is it not a problem when their info
| is public.
|
| At the end of the day what this comes down to is the current
| scale of parking tickets being something that needs to be
| backed by more violence (i.e. deploy actual cops with all their
| associated costs) than society would tolerate (people would
| complain about costs, request the resources be spent elsewhere,
| etc).
| pyronite wrote:
| > Most states have a public real time map showing snow plow
| locations. Ask yourself why is it not a problem when their
| info is public. From what I'm reading, I imagine it's because
| the snow plow trackers don't individually identify their
| operators as this seems to.
| truted2 wrote:
| I know this isn't federal jurisdiction but ever since reading the
| executive order issued yesterday and the quite vague description
| of what is Antifa I wonder if this type of
| interference/obstruction of law will start to be prosecuted.
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-
| actions/2025/09/desi...
| tdeck wrote:
| It's vague on purpose. Just like MS13 or Tren de Aragua, it can
| be whatever they want it to be.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| Excellent work. It would be great to have this in my city.
| Parking cops can't be everywhere at once.
|
| Generally I don't bother paying for public parking and just risk
| the fine unless I know i'm in an area with a lot of parking
| officers (i.e. my local CBD), I find I actually save more money
| this way.
|
| Some charges are insane, like $10 per hour to park near the beach
| in a richy rich suburb - unless you are one of the local wealthy
| residents, then its free.
|
| Perhaps this could be combined with some kind of SMS alerts, i.e.
| if I park at a location I can be alerted if a fine is issued?
| esbranson wrote:
| > lightning speed, the SF government changed
|
| The most impressive thing about this. Not to diminish Riley
| Walz's work, which is also impressive.
| joshfraser wrote:
| There are a ton of interesting use-cases for public city data.
| When I was an Airbnb host, I built an early alert system to send
| me email if my address was ever reported or under investigation.
| The government moves at a snails pace, so anyone who was paying
| attention would have plenty of time to cure any issues before any
| formal investigation was even started. I even had a personal
| dashboard showing how the enforcement office operated, how many
| investigators they had, which neighborhoods were getting the most
| enforcement actions, stats on how cases were resolved, how long
| they took, etc.
| felgueres wrote:
| For those in sf who want a reminder app to avoid street cleaning
| parking tickets, I built this app last year:
|
| https://streetcleaningparking.com
| psawaya wrote:
| Looks like it's back up!
| https://x.com/rtwlz/status/1970722519918498102
| thisOtterBeGood wrote:
| You could imagine that it won't work for long after publishing
| this. I would've either used it for myself and my friends or
| messaged the city about this straight away, so they can avoid
| things like that.
|
| I don't like these kind of apps that allow people to be smart
| around regulations that should apply for everyone.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| > I would've either used it for myself and my friends
|
| > I don't like these kind of apps that allow people to be smart
| around regulations that should apply for everyone.
| varenc wrote:
| I suspect is the source of the data:
| https://prdwmq.etimspayments.com/pbw/include/sanfrancisco/di...
|
| The online tool that lets you pay a citation doesn't list the
| citation's address, but that one above does. It's protected with
| a CAPTCHA, but a very weak one that's definitely no longer
| effective in our current era.
|
| My guess is the company SF hires to handles their parking
| citations will deploy reCAPTCHA or Cloudflare's anti-bot very
| soon. Though might be complicated given all the legal compliance
| stuff.
|
| ---
|
| This is the company SF and many others use to handle citations:
| https://www.conduent.com/
|
| brochure about their parking product:
| https://downloads.conduent.com/content/usa/en/brochure/total...
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Don't think I've ever seen traffic wardens referred to as
| "parking cops" before. Is that a common usage in America?
| ajoshu wrote:
| I seen a post about this on insta this morning, awesome project,
| of course it's SF
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| Top comment might be inaccurate now - it seems that the site is
| showing recent data again (as recent as 24 minutes ago).
| ramon156 wrote:
| +1 working again
| mutator wrote:
| The quality of the outcome of the street cleaning process is at
| best meh. Certainly not worth the high dollar amounts they are
| charging for the fees.
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