The DMV tells me that it only takes 15 signatures to get a street zoned, so maybe it actually happened. You’d think maybe they’d notify the residents. But, the woman I spoke with couldn’t tell me whether our street had actually been zoned, or if the signs were just wrong. She transferred me to someone who could, but no one answered. I have the number, though, so I’m going to call back.
Tag: parking
Cant I just park in front of my house?
I spoke too soon. In late July, I sent this letter to contest a parking ticket. I thought I had achieved victory when they forgave the ticket.
It turns out that I just won round one. Round two has now begun.
Yesterday, I looked out the window and noticed a parking ticket on the Disaster Magnet. Since my car was parked a few spaces away, I went to check mine.
Sure enough, there was the ticket. $30 for “P003 RESIDENTIAL PARKING”. Do you know what they’ve done? Sometime over the last week or so, they replaced all the parking signs on our street. They now state that a zone 1 sticker is required. No one notified me that there were new parking restrictions. I don’t know if the city is legally obligated to tell me, but they should be. Now, the DC DOT website still lists our block as un-zoned. I don’t know whether it just hasn’t been updated, or if they put up the wrong sign. In any event, at 9AM on the button I’m calling the DMV to find out what’s going on. I left a note on my car to hopefully prevent another ticket. I politely stated that I live on the block, I became aware of the new parking restriction last night, and I’m going to the DMV today. I have no idea if it will help.
So, let’s summarize my tickets since I moved here. The first I paid. It was for violating a temporary ‘No Parking’ sign. I thought I was past the area where parking was restricted, but there’s apparently some rule that you must be a certain distance away from the posted sign that isn’t printed on the sign. Maybe I could have contested it, I don’t know. My second was the $100 ticket for failure to register that I got while I had a temporary permit from the police. That one is still being contested. I think we’re going to call soon to see the status because we haven’t heard anything. The third was $30 for not having a residential permit, which we contested and won. And now this one, the fourth. All of these tickets, mind you, are for parking within 100 feet of my front door.
I hear rumors that the DC government brings in a huge portion of its revenue from parking tickets. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m starting to feel a little persecuted. We have tons of people living in Maryland and Virginia who drive past Metro into the city for work. Shift the tax burden to them! Shift the burden to the giant beaurocracy of the federal government! Shift it anywhere but your residents, who already pay extremely high tax rates.
Anyway, I will keep you updated. I don’t think I’ve adequately expressed how infuriating this is. It’s going to make me even madder if my suspicions prove true – that this is a sign mistake, not a change in parking rules. I was told by the DMV that it requires approval from a ridiculous percentage of the residents of a street to zone an un-zoned street, and no one knocked on my door.
If I ran for mayor with a platform of, “Let the Marylanders and Virginians pay the parking tickets”, do you think I’d win? I’d vote for me.
I win! Im a big winner!
Some of you may remember that I contested a ridiculous parking ticket last month. I left the response letter at home, so I can’t post it now, but I can summarize.
Dear Sir, Your relentless powers of persuasion are too much for us. We have tried to formulate a response, a scenario where you might possibly be in the wrong, even a little bit, but we have failed. As such, please do not pay us any money. We’re sorry. Sincerely, DC Adjudication Services
I’m pretty sure that’s almost word for word. I may have taken a few liberties and substituted a word here and there to get down to what they really meant, without the posturing and bureaucracy. We’re still waiting on a response for the big ticket, the $100 ticket. The wife wrote that letter. She’s a lawyer, so she should be better at convincing them, but we had a much stronger case on the one that I contested. So we’ll see.
71% is good?
The folks over at DCist write that, according to an article in the Examiner, 71% of the DC area drives alone to work. They say this is good because we were at 74% three years ago, and the nation is at 77% and rising.
That’s kind of depressing. I’ve been taking Metro to work since March, and I love it. I don’t worry about traffic. I’ve done more reading since then than in the previous three years combined. My biggest worries are four car trains at Pentagon City and loud tourists.
I know many people don’t have the opportunity to take public transportation, and carpooling can be hard. But only doing 6% better than the national average in a city like DC is kind of sad. I wonder what the percentage is in London, for example, where they have huge congestion taxes. Now that I’m an excessively smug city resident and Metro rider, I say $20 to drive your car into the city! $30 if you’ve come from more than ten miles away! We’ll give two monthly exemptions for people who just have to come to the city every once in a while, like they way I have to drive out to Manassas once or twice a month for work.
We can use some of that money to pay for whatever it is we’re paying for with all the parking tickets DC gives out. I think more and more that DC gives out those tickets maliciously. I think I’m going to start contesting them regardless of guilt, just to spite the city.
Letter to the DMV
There’s a new entry to the Angry Letters section of the site. You can find my letter to the DMV here. It will go in the mail tomorrow, as soon as I buy a stamp.
The street is NOT zoned
According to the DC Department of Transportation website, our block is NOT zoned residential. Neither side. My guess is that the sign says “residential” because they don’t make custom signs for our weird un-zoned street. I printed out the DDOT search page showing that our block isn’t zoned residential, and we’ll be contesting this ticket.
Now theyve done it
The DMV told me to get a petition to have our street zoned residential. The woman I talked to was very nice, but completely failed to address my concerns. “Is there another street nearby that’s not zoned where you could park on Tuesdays?” Honestly, I don’t know. And I won’t find out. I was parked 15 feet from my front door, and I got a ticket designed to keep commuters from parking all day in residential zones.
I’m going to contest the ticket. I’m going to write my councilmember. I don’t know if I’m adequately portraying how ridiculous this ticket is. It means that I’m subject to a ticket, every Tuesday, unless I drive around and find some other street to park on that isn’t zoned.
This isn’t over. I will not pay this ticket. If I can’t park on the street where I live, then there’s something deeply wrong with the system.
Another parking ticket to contest
DC is a little crazy with their parking tickets. When I registered my car, I thought I would get a Zone 1 designation on my registration sticker. The 1500 block of our street is Zone 1 parking. Most of the surrounding streets are Zone 1. But not my block. So I didn’t get issued a zone designation – it says “No RPP”. RPP stands for Residential Parking Permit.
This morning, I moved my car to the right side of the street for street cleaning on the left. This afternoon, I got a parking ticket for failure to display an RPP. I can’t display an f’ing RPP if I’m not issued one. Are they telling me that, on Tuesdays, I just have to drive my car to work, and not return until I can park on the left side of the street?
This is ridiculous. The DMV is closed now, but they will be hearing from me tomorrow.
I would rant some more, but I have to go pick up my wife.