Fixed, App That Fixes Parking Tickets, Gets Blocked in SF, Oakland and L.A

I see this as a miniature version of the extremely worrying argument about plea bargaining, that it is necessary because the courts couldn't handle the huge volume of trials that would be required without it.

If you're handing out so many violations that you can't handle everyone engaging in an active defense against them, then you're doing something deeply wrong, and the solution isn't to discourage people from exercising their legal rights.

Yes, we all have an interest in parking space being appropriately regulated, but we all have a much greater interest in the state's punitive power being appropriately exercised, and I'm sure there are ways to achieve both anyway.

I also just want to point out, the SFMTA has brought this on themselves. If they didn't have such an egregious erroneous ticket rate, Fixed could never be profitable. They only get paid if you don't have to pay the ticket, so if the SFMTA had an error rate of 5% rather than 33% Fixed wouldn't have enough to work with.

1 inch over the curb... we're going to tow your car with $700 worth of fines.

No visible sign on the street and nothing within 100 ft (which there has to be by law)... it doesn't matter, you should have known we intended that street to have no parking between 4-6pm.

If you tried to come up with a system with more adverse and broken incentives, you'd be hard pushed to come up with a better one than the SFMTA. 1) Let's saddle this organization with $10Ms of losses each year. 2) Let's give them the authority to issue tickets and fine the citizens for breaking an arbitrary set of laws. 3) Let's allow them keep the fines and treat it as 'revenue'. 4) Let's allows them to regulate themselves and decided if the tickets they issued are fair.

I don't ride the buses; I take CalTrain. There's three pieces of hardware of concern here: the scanner that checks your pass, the Clipper website, and whatever Walgreens uses. The scanners take a week to pick up payments through Clipper (first party), and instantly from Walgreens (third party). I find it exceptionally odd (and mightily inconvenient) that a third-party is able to add value into the system faster than the owners of the system themselves.

(edit: and see the sibling response to yours from jcrawfordor for more info!)

The whole "tag on/off once at the beginning of the month" (which I've always thought was the weirdest thing…) then is to sync the on-card value w/ what you own I suppose, so that it scans properly on their readers. Now I wonder that given that I buy from Walgreens, if that's an absolute necessity, or a hardship imposed by people being too lazy to explain the inner workings of the card; it's a pain b/c if you forget to tag off, you get charged full-fare (and your monthly pass is deactivated until you re-add value to the card…), as I'd much rather just buy the monthly pass and not have to do the monthly tag dance.

What's even trickier is when you want thorough logging. Clipper terminals report back card usage information when they update on value adds. Some locks struggle with this - for Onity locks, retrieving user history requires connecting a bulky diagnostic device to the lock. An interesting solution is that used by Cyberlock. In that system, an audit log is stored in the key itself and the key has a short expiry, forcing the holder to frequently reprogram it, during which the log is retrieved. The locks must still store a log too in case of disappearing keys, but it allows for fairly accurate logging without frequently having to visit every lock.

Interesting side note, I recently had an Uber driver who worked for the PPA.

I was parked in my neighborhood and had a valid residential permit that only required that I move my car for street sweeping. So when I parked on Wednesday, there was no sign that said I needed to move my car before the next Tuesday. On Friday evening (I know, because I checked my car on Thursday evening), someone who was moving posted a temporary permit they'd applied for their moving truck to park outside their apartment. I received a ticket on Saturday morning despite the requirement that the temporary permit be posted 72 hours in advance of the moving period.

I waited in a 90 minute line to contest it (the building where you contest/pay parking tickets is one of the few areas in the city where you'll find nothing but 30 minute meters, so it's virtually impossible to drive to contest a ticket without getting another ticket) and was told 'no' without any explanation.

I don't care how dishonest or sleazy Fixed is/was, if they're successfully fighting SFMTA's parking enforcement, I support them. Fuck SFMTA's parking enforcement...it is so beyond corrupt that the people involved need to be put in their place.

My online appeal was denied, my written appeal was denied, and my administrative hearing was denied. I paid an $83 fine and a $25 fee to file an appeal in court. Three months exactly after the supposed violation, a county judge dismissed my ticket. The city returned my $108.

The judge said there was literally nothing I could do to prevent the same situation in the future (ie, there is no feedback loop), but that I would prevail in court again.

This situation affects me regularly because I don't own a car, so I rent one hourly, drive to my residence, pick up my wife, go grocery shopping, return to my residence, and then eventually return the car. The Oakland parking department continues to believe that my actions are illegal.

I am not really sure permit parking violations and tax on the poor are one or the other. Most people who are poor are not worried about tickets caused by permit parking violations more being randomly stopped for fixit tickets and the like. Again pay-to-play being taken out is a great first step. And there's just no real balanced way to handle this and thus the lawmakers balance the odds in their favor rather than the people they serve.