Washington Gives $1.3M in Parking Fines During Snowstorm | Hacker News Reader

Washington Gives $1.3M in Parking Fines During Snowstorm

nytimes.com

62 pointsdaj4040 comments

The snow emergency was announced on Thursday a full day before the snow arrived. The emergency then went into effect Friday morning and the snow did not start until around lunch time, several hours later. There was not a single flake of snow in the first couple hours when most of the tickets were issues. People who are saying they got tickets for being 'snowed in' are blatantly misrepresenting what happened. They were parked illegally before the snow even fell, and had plenty of warning.

Additionally, as others have said, parking was FREE at metro station garages around the area through Tuesday. And many area garages were also offering free or $1 parking. There is absolutely no excuse for being parked on the snow emergency routes.

Maybe consider that many people just can't act that fast. Some may not have even been in town. The average time from when people heard about the announcement until the first snow was falling was probably just about a couple of hours.

I would also assume that the free or $1 garage parking was full just a couple hours after the announcement.

Why would you go out of town in the middle of winter and leave your car parked on a snow emergency route?

You don't get to set up problems for yourself, then complain when those self-created problems have consequences.

I don't understand why so many are eager to defend these people. If you can't move your car quickly, don't park it in a place where you might need to move it quickly. If you negligently leave your car on a major road during a blizzard, don't be shocked to find that your car has been dug out courtesy of city parking enforcement.

Some of us do travel for a living and can be out of town for weeks on end. It does happen -- and where you're parked is an afterthought. You don't always get to pick which street you park on.

Really, you just can't be bothered to think about whether your parking spot is a wise location to leave your car for several weeks? And further, that you can't even choose not to park on a snow emergency route?

Your car is probably the first or second most expensive thing you own. Take ten seconds to read the signs governing the legalities of where you store it. If you screw they up (it happens to all of us) then own the screwup.

I've lived in places where you don't have a lot of choice in the matter. I do make an effort to not park on the emergency route in my town. On the side streets, they have alternate side parking. Every week, you have to move your car.

I can go on a one week trip which will turn into a three week one. It's just the nature of the job - the customer's needs come first. They're running billion dollar manufacturing facilities and all the equipment has to keep running.

If I was leaving town for several weeks (or even just the weekend) my very first thought would be "is this a good location to leave my car for the duration I'd be gone?" and it certainly wouldn't be an afterthought!

Not every city experiences the same logistical problems, and for a snowy city, I think it's quite reasonable to penalize people for parking in snow emergency routes. If Washington DC were such a place that didn't historically snow, I would sympathize with the fined.

The needs of some city residents to travel for weeks or months without thinking about where they are parked don't outweigh the needs of a snowy city to have emergency snow travel routes.

If you wanted to park some place and hope that it doesn't snow, that's both your loss and gain.

Yes actually you do get to pick which street you park on. Unless you have one of the new fangled diverless cars. If you are traveling in winter and could be home for weeks on end, don't leave for cat in a place where it might get towed.

> -- and where you're parked is an afterthought

Not in places like NYC w/ street sweeping schedules.

I'm on the West Coast. I knew about the snow predicted 36 hours before it hit.

All tickets (for parking on snow emergency routes) have been voided

http://dcist.com/2016/01/mayor_bowser_is_voiding_tickets_iss...

During snow emergencies, cities should work with parking garages to make overnight parking for cars, free. It'll solve a lot of problems.

If cars are not removed past the emergency, ticket revenue can be shared with the garage

>During snow emergencies, cities should work with parking garages to make overnight parking for cars, free. It'll solve a lot of problems.

DC did in this case. The city warned about the emergency routes ahead of time, offered free parking at metro stations, and worked with private garages to offer $1/day parking.

That's generous. Do you also think the city should "work with" hotels to provide free housing for people during snow storms, or is your outpouring reserved only for automobiles?

If they declared your house was in an emergency route and you had to move for a few days then yes.

In your reasoning you do take into account the houses being immobile and automobiles - well... mobile?

Actually, the city did work with area motels to house homeless in order to get them off the streets, since they were out of space in the homeless shelters.

You're getting downvoted, but I think your point is a useful illustration of how we unwittingly worry more about places for cars to sleep than places for people to sleep. Everyone demands free, abundant, convenient parking, at the same time they vote to restrict construction of new housing. Then they complain about rents. People are weird.

Great. What's the point of snow emergency routes if you can just park there during a storm with no consequences?

Many local garages were either free or $1/day for the storm. There was no excuse to leave cars parked on these routes.

What about being unable to dig your car out?

Unless you were the victim of some seriously dedicated practical jokesters, this was unlikely to have been a problem before the storm hit.

I think this was a face saving publicity move by DC mayor.

I guess I missed the free or $1 a day parking info since I was working from home.

It certainly feels unfair to all those people (including me) who took enough pains to ensure they planned their days in a way that the cars weren't on the Snow Emergency Routes.

And? Don't park in snow emergency routes during a historic blizzard.

  The advisory said they issued 2,091 parking tickets in the
  first three hours of the mayor’s declaration.

  The tickets drew backlash from drivers who said they were 
  unable to dig out their cars. Others said they did not feel 
  comfortable driving in the snow, some because their cars 
  were not properly equipped for it.

3 hours after the declaration, and for cars that could not reasonably be moved because of said emergency. Have some fucking empathy.

> Mayor Muriel E. Bowser declared the emergency on Friday before a storm that dropped as much as 26 inches on the capital.

That sentence there carries the word "before", which suggests that when the mayor made the declaration, the blizzard had not yet snowed in any cars.

That's not exactly how it played out. FTA: "Mayor Bowser announced the snow emergency the day before the storm hit, on Thursday, and parking enforcement officers and tow drivers moved swiftly once it went into effect on Friday morning."

Also, looks like the mayor is voiding all the tickets from the 22nd: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Mayor-Bowser-Voids-A...

We knew the storm was coming days before. Snow emergency routes are posted and publicly known. People's cars couldn't be stuck there due to the snow unless they failed to move their cars before the storm like they were required to do. This failure makes it much harder to clear important roads and impedes emergency services. Ticketing these people seems entirely appropriate to me.

This is what my friends in DC feel as well. There was a lot of lead up to the storm, and well before it hit you could have moved your car elsewhere. But people were "betting on the come" as they say in Craps and they were parking there assuming that either a) they would be able to move if it snowed, and b) if it snowed so much that they couldn't move well the city would have bigger problems than ticketing them.

If the law is amended, it should be amended to read "It is illegal to park on a snow emergency route at time time during and 24hours before a snow emergency. A snow emergency exists when the city declares it." Then the city could announce the emergency before the snow started, and start warning people, and then start ticketing people, and ideally by the time the snow hit there would be few if any cars in the emergency snow lanes.

The emergency did go into effect before the snow actually fell. Not 24 hours before, but most of the ticketing and towing was right before or immediately after the snow started falling.

As others noted, the declaration happened before the weather hit. People could reasonably move their cars. All of the affected spaces are super clearly marked and people who park there regularly should've had very ample warning about it.

Additionally, based on my understanding, a lot of local parking lots/garages drastically dropped their rates to help accommodate.

I would be more inclined to have some empathy if my local drivers didn't think the city's bicycle lanes were an appropriate place to park for the next week because they are too lazy to dig out a parking space.

These fuckwits had advanced warning of the blizzard and still parked in a way to hinder emergency response capabilities. How you can paint them as innocent people who were fucked over is beyond me.

3 hours after the declaration there was not a single flake of snow on the ground.

This is Washington DC (absolutely egregious omission by NYTimes, IMO), and not only were the roads blanketed with snow but exceedingly slippery a day earlier.

See here for anecdotal reports regarding the city's absurd winter road strategy:

https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/41xgqe/lmfao/

And furthermore, thousands of tickets will be forgiven:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-to-forgi...

I dunno, not having much of a plan seems like an appropriate measure for storms that only happen every 5 years or so.

Which sounds glib, but it takes a lot of equipment to be able to rapidly deal with snow on a lot of roads, equipment that would be sitting around rusting a lot of the time.

This is more like a 25-year or 50-year event, I'd say. I think this was the #2 or #3 biggest blizzard recorded here. It's ok for something like that to screw things up for a few days.

Washington only charges $20 per day of impound? My motorcycle spent a 3 days in impound because someone moved in and needed moving-truck street space costing me over $600 with a few hundred for the ticket and then something closer to $100 a day for impound. Stupid San Francisco. Parking at only $1 is also incredible.

How is this a thing? Were there posted signs that the moving truck was coming? Why did they not just have them look up the license plate and ask you to move? So many better solutions...

DC is great at giving tickets, but as of yesterday main roads in DC still weren't completely cleared of snow. They are inept at the stuff that counts.

Drivers angered at being called out on their selfish behavior.

In other breaking news, water confirmed to be still wet.

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