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Making sure cars weren't parked on street-cleaning side and dealing with tickets also seemed like a huge hassle. Cars have a really high administrative burden c

Making sure cars weren't parked on street-cleaning side and dealing with tickets also seemed like a huge hassle. Cars have a really high administrative burden compared to homes, especially when things go wrong, which they do at a higher rate. Oh gosh, don't get me started on this. It's theft, plain and simple. Or rather tax. Owning a car in a city is a massive pain in the butt, and it's cost me like $2k per year. Whether it's bullshit tickets, street cleaning gotchas, expired plates (got a ticket one day after it expired just yesterday), being parked in a valid parking spot that is nevertheless a tow zone for mysterious reasons, having to go in front of a judge to point out that it was bullshit for me to be towed because the facility that I had to visit to pay for the ticket was closed due to a holiday, on and on and on. You get the idea. I've sort of resigned myself to it just being "car stuff," so whenever another crap ticket appears on my window it doesn't bug me much. Just more tax for the city. Whatever. I know a few of the tickets are my fault, but geez, it seems almost impossible to be a perfectly law-abiding car owner in a major city over the course of five years. It's actually tempting to rent out my car to someone else just to cover the administrative cost of owning a car in a city.

ghaff 9y ago
More or less. I don't even live in the city but I still get a ticket per year or so, for often inscrutable reasons, when I come in. It doesn't help that so many of the signs related to parking are sufficiently complicated that I rarely have full confidence that I'm 100% legal. The latest naked revue grab is switching a lot of the 2 hr. parking meters from ending at 6pm to ending at 8pm. It's not so much paying for the extra 2 hours of parking but that, when coming in for dinner and a show, I pretty much have to be parked before 6pm. (And I've been ticketed for feeding the meter.)
snug 9y ago
If you're playing $2k/year in tickets, you should be paying closer attention, at that point you have nobody to blame but yourself.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  It's not just tickets. It's tickets + permits + insurance + plates. I wasn't blaming anyone else, either. I assume you're perfectly vigilant in every aspect of your life? Meh, never mind. By the way, a friend just tried to park in the spot that I got towed out of. That's how unassuming it looks. That's just a thing you get to learn if you happen to live here, and the only way you learn it is after you get towed. Not a damn thing you can do about it other than pay up. And how about the $120 ticket the other day for making a left at a light that was green but happened to be labeled no left turn without an arrow? No reason not to be able to turn left, as long as it was green. There wasn't any oncoming traffic. Yeah we missed the sign, and for that we get to pay $120 to follow the silly rule. The tickets add up faster than you think.
  - Frondo 9y ago
    Man, I have owned a car in a medium-sized city for something like 20 years and I can count on both hands the number of tickets I've gotten. I'm by no means "perfectly vigilant" but if you're getting them with any regularity then that's just carelessness. That is something fixable by you, personally, rather than suggesting the systemic changes that you seem to want to see. Personal responsibility for the small stuff, systemic change for the big stuff.
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      May I suggest that owning a car in a medium-sized city is a bit different from owning one in one of the largest cities in the world? (Top 25.) When the parking people patrol your car, specifically, every day, looking for any small mistake, you bet you'll get a ticket. The best is getting one for "illegally parked too far away from curb" when it's literally one foot away. If you're arguing that tickets aren't a significant source of revenue for large cities, you may want to check the statistics. https://www.parkingpanda.com/blog/post/top-10-cities-with-highest-revenues-from-parking-violations https://www.parkingpanda.com/blog/post/top-10-cities-with-hi...
      - 9y ago
oh_sigh 9y ago
Cars are an expensive and selfish way to move individuals around a city. Why should cities encourage car use?
rsingel 9y ago
Perhaps the city is telling you something. When I got a job that didn't require daily commuting, I quickly racked up parking tickets and decided it was cheaper and less stress to bike/take cabs/zipcar, etc. Now that Lyft/Uber are around, for many living in a city, car ownership is a bad financial decision.
megablast 9y ago
If it is only costing you $2k a year, you are still taking money from tax payers. Cars are a huge burden to a city, costing billions a year in revenue, and more in lost revenue. Not including the number of deaths and injuries.
- 1123581321 9y ago
  Do you have a source on the average annual external cost for cars? There are a quarter million cars in the US, so billions could be anywhere from $4/car/year to $4,000/car/year (unlikely as that would be a third of all state/federal/local income tax.) Carbon offsets cost about $100/year or less. Auto crashes supposedly cost a trillion a year in direct costs and lost time, but those costs are mostly absorbed by insurance, employers and individuals, so don't factor into the $2k/year figure. Interested to see corroborating or contradicting data.

ghaff 9y ago

More or less. I don't even live in the city but I still get a ticket per year or so, for often inscrutable reasons, when I come in. It doesn't help that so many of the signs related to parking are sufficiently complicated that I rarely have full confidence that I'm 100% legal. The latest naked revue grab is switching a lot of the 2 hr. parking meters from ending at 6pm to ending at 8pm. It's not so much paying for the extra 2 hours of parking but that, when coming in for dinner and a show, I pretty much have to be parked before 6pm. (And I've been ticketed for feeding the meter.)

snug 9y ago

If you're playing $2k/year in tickets, you should be paying closer attention, at that point you have nobody to blame but yourself.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
It's not just tickets. It's tickets + permits + insurance + plates. I wasn't blaming anyone else, either. I assume you're perfectly vigilant in every aspect of your life? Meh, never mind. By the way, a friend just tried to park in the spot that I got towed out of. That's how unassuming it looks. That's just a thing you get to learn if you happen to live here, and the only way you learn it is after you get towed. Not a damn thing you can do about it other than pay up. And how about the $120 ticket the other day for making a left at a light that was green but happened to be labeled no left turn without an arrow? No reason not to be able to turn left, as long as it was green. There wasn't any oncoming traffic. Yeah we missed the sign, and for that we get to pay $120 to follow the silly rule. The tickets add up faster than you think.
- Frondo 9y ago
  Man, I have owned a car in a medium-sized city for something like 20 years and I can count on both hands the number of tickets I've gotten. I'm by no means "perfectly vigilant" but if you're getting them with any regularity then that's just carelessness. That is something fixable by you, personally, rather than suggesting the systemic changes that you seem to want to see. Personal responsibility for the small stuff, systemic change for the big stuff.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    May I suggest that owning a car in a medium-sized city is a bit different from owning one in one of the largest cities in the world? (Top 25.) When the parking people patrol your car, specifically, every day, looking for any small mistake, you bet you'll get a ticket. The best is getting one for "illegally parked too far away from curb" when it's literally one foot away. If you're arguing that tickets aren't a significant source of revenue for large cities, you may want to check the statistics. https://www.parkingpanda.com/blog/post/top-10-cities-with-highest-revenues-from-parking-violations https://www.parkingpanda.com/blog/post/top-10-cities-with-hi...
    - 9y ago

oh_sigh 9y ago

Cars are an expensive and selfish way to move individuals around a city. Why should cities encourage car use?

rsingel 9y ago

Perhaps the city is telling you something. When I got a job that didn't require daily commuting, I quickly racked up parking tickets and decided it was cheaper and less stress to bike/take cabs/zipcar, etc. Now that Lyft/Uber are around, for many living in a city, car ownership is a bad financial decision.

megablast 9y ago

If it is only costing you $2k a year, you are still taking money from tax payers. Cars are a huge burden to a city, costing billions a year in revenue, and more in lost revenue. Not including the number of deaths and injuries.

1123581321 9y ago
Do you have a source on the average annual external cost for cars? There are a quarter million cars in the US, so billions could be anywhere from $4/car/year to $4,000/car/year (unlikely as that would be a third of all state/federal/local income tax.) Carbon offsets cost about $100/year or less. Auto crashes supposedly cost a trillion a year in direct costs and lost time, but those costs are mostly absorbed by insurance, employers and individuals, so don't factor into the $2k/year figure. Interested to see corroborating or contradicting data.