Comment by Ricapar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ricapar | Hacker News Reader

I've seen this idea before, and it is common in the trucking/delivery business. Cops/meter maids/etc take advantage over delivery trucks who park in front of businesses to quickly load and unload merchandise, especially in large cities.

I know a few people who work at such companies, and they all have some sort of subscription service with a third party that handles all these parking tickets for them. If they lose, they pay the ticket, nothing else. If the company wins, they pay a percentage of what the ticket was.

To give you an idea of what type of advantage cops take over these drivers.. There are a few streets in NYC that a friend's company makes deliveries to. The cops know the delivery schedules, are make sure to be there on time, dropping off the ticket pretty much as the vehicle parks. One of the drivers confronted the ticketing cop once, only to be shrugged off with: "What do you care? You're not the one paying for it."

I'm glad to see this come as a service to the general public. There's some hope that with enough people fighting bogus tickets, someone will eventually get the message and stop handing them out so casually.

In fairness, are you sure they should be parking there if it's not a loading zone? I once was stuck behind a truck that refused to move on a one-lane street for 20 minutes while he insisted on unloading, backing up traffic 3 blocks down the street.

I rather agree. When my daily commute involved driving through the city centre, it certainly seemed like the general public would be best served by not having things left parked where they shouldn't be! It was a rare day that didn't involve sitting in traffic for 5-10 minutes waiting for a rudely-parked van or lorry to be unloaded.

In midtown NYC, there are lots of narrow streets that have small businesses lining both sides of the street and cars parked on both sides of the street. The only way to deliver anything to these businesses would be to double park the truck. Making double parking illegal there is essentially outlawing commerce on these streets.

That sounds like something that the businesses of that street should be addressing with the local government to get that obvious problem resolved. Such as a loading zone that doesn't allow general parking during certain hours. Yes, it's not optimal but it's better than the ticket and causing traffic problems.

The local government has no interest in fixing it since the parking tickets are a cash cow for the city. The fines are ultimately paid by the people who have to pay more for the goods these businesses are selling to cover the cost of business. Unfortunately, this is just one of the many things that makes businesses in NYC less cost-competitive.

The "free street parking is my god-given right" lobby in NYC is an equally big issue. As far as I'm aware, it's the only city of its level of density in the Western world that has free street parking in the urban core, producing super weird dynamics for a limited resource priced way below market value. You could improve a lot of things by: 1) charging something closer to market value for parking; and 2) removing at least some of the parking entirely, turning the space currently occupied by rusting stationary metal (which is rarely moved b/c people fear losing their parking space!) over to more useful purposes such as loading/unloading zones, bike lanes, hell even some wider sidewalks and linear parks.

Yes, they should address it with local government and I'm sure they do. However, that's not a perfectly effecient system either. There's often one or two vocal citizens that can obstruct the process for small businesses. Just to be clear, I don't feel governments should favor small businesses over residential or vice versa, but just that complaining to local government means getting politics involved.

The other issue is that perhaps the businesses want the parking for customers. Seems silly to cut off a bunch of parking for 20 minutes of deliveries in a day as well.

Lots of cities were just not designed with the modern world in mind and these industries grow out of the problems.

In Tokyo, trucks are only allowed to unload during the nighttime. The Japanese attitude toward government regulation (and staying up late for social obligations, etc) is quite different, for better or for worse.

I observed the same thing in Beijing. Daytime deliveries are handled by motor-trikes with a small flatbed on the back. Delivery trucks do not block streets in the daytime and appear to be largely, maybe completely banned during daytime.

I get what you're saying, but double parking is already illegal on those streets no matter how aggressively its enforced. Midtown has commercial parking zones (with their very own meters!). I would imagine the "right" thing to do is park there and "carry" load your goods on a handtruck or similar.

San Francisco's solution is to allow short-term double parking for commercial deliveries. It's less infuriating to other drivers when it's explicitly legal.

I would have to assume it was not a loading zone, if it were I find it doubtful they would be ticketed. I guess it depends on local ordinance, but from what I'm hearing this sounds like a justified ticket.

I think transport trucks have first right to streets (after emergency vehicles, of course). They pay a lot of taxes and it's the only way to get good delivered in cities. If commuters don't like waiting, they can always take transit or ride a bike.

Citizens pay a pretty decent amount in taxes too.

If your drivers regularly park illegally no one is "taking advantage of your company" by showing up on schedule to issue a ticket. I'll acknowledge that bogus tickets might be a problem (that isn't my experience), but this example is hardly convincing.

Yeah, it sounds a bit like complaining about the police stepping up patrols in a frequently robbed area to catch the culprits. That's their job.

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