4 ms·

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

• scottbez1 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      Having a car in SF is not mandatory. It's quite useful but you can live well without.
      • rahimnathwani 1y ago
        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 1y ago
          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 1y ago
            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 1y ago
              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 1y ago
                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 1y ago
                  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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        > 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 1y ago
    >> 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 1y ago
  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.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• whakim 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      How bizarre, this rule is enforced across most of EU without signage and somehow most people cope. Why wouldn't Americans?
      • adolph 1y ago
        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 1y ago
      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.