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stephanie
01-07-2007, 03:29 AM
I suppose this is the way, for wanting to live in a socialist, communist community??? ...
The once Beautiful City of San. Fransisco had become known for Cursing, fighting and Killing over a Parking Space......
How lovely......

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2007/01/06/us/06parking_lg.jpg
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 5 — It bears the hallmarks of a classic urban scourge: back-channel sales, assaults on enforcement officials and even death.


It is the price of parking in San Francisco.



Burdened with one of the densest downtowns in the country and a Californian love for moving vehicles, San Franciscans have been shocked in recent months by crimes related to finding places to park, including an attack in September in which a young man was killed trying to defend a spot he had found.

More recently, the victims have been parking control officers — do not call them meter maids — who suffered four attacks in late November, and two officers went to a hospital.

Over all, 2006 was a dangerous year for those hardy souls handing out tickets here, with 28 attacks, up from 17 in 2005.

All of which has left officials in this otherwise civilized community scrambling to explain, and solve, “parking rage.”

“It’s hard for me to understand people reacting in such a hostile manner,” said Nathaniel P. Ford Sr., executive director of the Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees parking. “Clearly, this is a working person simply doing their job. I’ve gotten parking tickets, and I sort of slap myself on the wrist and pay the ticket.”

People in the field say abuse is common, often frightening and, occasionally, humiliating. In November, an officer was spat on, another was punched through the window of his Geo Metro, and an irate illegal Parker smashed the windshield of another officer’s golf-cart-like vehicle.

“Just driving down the street, you get yelled at,” said Lawanna Preston, staff director for Local 790 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents parking control officers.

The officers are city employees but not in the Police Department.

“They can’t even eat lunch with that uniform on, because people approach them and curse at them,” Ms. Preston said.


About 75 officers demonstrated on Friday at the Hall of Justice asking for more protection.

Psychologists, planners and others familiar with the parking problems say they include underpriced meters and overloaded streets.

Officials have been looking into solutions to prevent attacks, including adding cameras to the officers’ vehicles and pepper spray to their equipment, which now includes a flashlight, a radio and, of course, the ticket pad.

District Attorney Kamala D. Harris said she was considering lobbying the state to increase the penalties for attacking parking officers.

A public service announcement warning against violence against ticket writers is to start appearing on buses this month.

Last month, the police announced the arrest of a second suspect in the killing of Boris Albinder, 19, on Sept. 16 near Golden Gate Park as he tried to save a parking space for a friend by standing in it. The authorities say Mr. Albinder was attacked by a group of men in a van who demanded that he cede the space.

Many local planners say the lack of parking is in part an unfortunate byproduct of the city’s popularity.

“Any city that is worth visiting is going to have a terrible parking problem,” said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, a public policy center. “If you don’t want it to be Disneyland or Houston, you’re going to be experiencing a parking shortage.”
Mr. Metcalf added, however, that the density of San Francisco, with an estimated 740,000 residents in 49 square miles, also put in a different category from New York, which is also known for its parking nightmares.

“It’s too dense for people to drive easily and not dense enough for really great public transit,” he said. “So the result is frustration.”

That opinion was seconded by Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles, widely considered something of a parking theory guru. (His fans are called Shoupistas.)

Professor Shoup said the chronic lack of parking here was a result of a decision to encourage a bustling downtown free of atmosphere-killing parking lots, a phenomenon echoed in other parking-challenged — and popular — cities like Boston, Chicago and New York.


“Whenever someone from San Francisco calls to whine about the fact there’s no parking,” he said, “I always say, ‘Well, you have to choose, do you want to be more like San Francisco or more like L.A.?’ And that usually ends the conversation.”

That said, Professor Shoup noted that San Francisco had some questionable parking policies, namely cheap on-street parking and expensive garages and lots, a dynamic that encourages drivers to look endlessly for meters rather than pay for the privilege of parking off the street.

“A lot of the traffic in downtown San Francisco is people looking for curb parking,” he said. “And they’re apparently so fed up that they’re willing to assault parking officers to protest the idea of shortage of spaces.”

That frustration extends all the way to people like George Anderson, president of the American Association of Anger Management Providers, a mental health group, who said the parking problems here were so notorious that he had stopped holding paid lectures here.

“They’d be angry when they walked in,” said Mr. Anderson, a clinical social worker who lives in Los Angeles. “I’d spend half my time defending why I couldn’t include parking in the fee.”

Mr. Anderson said that his anger management patients regularly complained about the road and that not finding parking could be the last straw.

“If you’re driving on a highway,” he said, “you’re already stressed to the max. So that by the time you get to the parking stall, you end up with an inappropriate expression of anger.”

Ms. Preston of the officers’ union said many attackers had another motivation.

“They think they can take out their frustration on government in general” by abusing the officers, who work 40-hour weeks for about $40,000 a year,” she said, adding, “They say, ‘I’m tired of the city taking my money.’ ”

There certainly is money in parking tickets. San Francisco issues 1.9 million parking citations and brings in more than $40 million a year from violators, according to the transportation agency.

The city has a pilot program to scan license plates for 8,000 repeat offenders who owe an estimated $6.1 million. In addition, the city manages 41 lots and garages. It owns most of them. (Whoa, no big brother lurking here)

Nationally, parking is a $20 billion industry, experts say, with revenues divided almost equally between public and private entities.

Private citizens have also gotten into the act, selling or trading spaces on Web sites like Craigslist, where a prime spot can bring in thousands of dollars a year.

Whitney Schmucker, 22, who lives on Nob Hill, has just agreed to pay $280 a month for a spot after advertising herself online. (“Great credit!” was a lure.)

“If you live in San Francisco, it’s not a choice of whether or not you get a parking spot,” Ms. Schmucker said in an e-mail message. “You either get one or you don’t have a car.”

Parking bloggers like John Van Horn, an editor in Los Angeles who compiles thoughts about parking on the Web site parkingtoday.typepad .com said the situation — and the attacks — in San Francisco were not unique but merely a reminder of how crazed Californians can be about all things automotive.

“I’ve noticed lately watching some of the citation writers,” Mr. Van Horn said. “They don’t get very far away from their vehicles. They want to be able to get away.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/us/06parking.html?_r=2&ei=5094&en=400139e7d77ec704&hp=&ex=1168146000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The oh so enlighted ones, the highest edemated of all, are also the most restricted, uptight, fighting, shouting, and now KILLING..
Over................A goshdarn parking space.....


No thanks.........

Nienna
01-07-2007, 01:55 PM
The thought that someone could kill another person over a parking spot.... It all stems from the self-indulgent, "I deserve" attitude that is taught in schools and touted everywhere in our society. :(

Gaffer
01-07-2007, 02:05 PM
The city of brotherly love. They need to pay those fines so they can keep their socialist programs funded.

welcome to the democratic socialist republic of san fransico.