The quote above is from Don Shoup. I asked him about a notice folks in my neighborhood received telling us we cannot park in our driveways and will be ticketed if we do so. Are you amazed. What you must realize is that this is all Don Shoup’s fault.
Don has been working for years to get the city to enforce the rules that you can’t park across sidewalks in the Westwood area of Los Angeles, near UCLA. Seems the Shoup Dogg noted, and rightly so, that folks living in the apartment rich area near the campus were parking so that their cars crossed the sidewalks and made it virtually impossible for folks, particularly handicapped folks, to walk through the area. He has been working with the city to get the problem fixed.
The local landlords don’t like it, since there isn’t enough parking when you have four students living in a two bedroom apartment. IN some cases the landlords actually reserve these spaces for their tenants. They park not only in the driveways leading to the buildings, but also in the parkways, on the grass, where ever they can find space. Finally, after a lawsuit from a local handicapped group, the city decided to enforce the rules and with much fanfare issued warnings and then tickets in the area.
I am 100% in favor of ticketing cars blocking sidewalks. However, we began receiving warnings in my neighborhood. They are going to begin ticketing cars parked like this:
Note these cars are parked in their driveways, short of the sidewalk, not blocking anything. Now if they want to ticket this car, encroaching on the sidewalk, be my guest:
However, they are veering from the extreme of no enforcement to enforcement out of control. The law says this the area between the street and the sidewalk is a parkway. And you can’t park in a parkway. Huh. I’m not parking in the parkway, I’m parking in the driveway that goes through the parkway. No, says enforcement, and they are backed up by black letter law. That thirty foot long piece of concrete that leads from the street to my property and garage is part of the “Parkway” and by golly they are going to ticket.
I stopped a PEO and asked him about it and he said that the problem was that someone had complained (probably in Westwood) that the law was not being enforced consistently so now the city is going hog wild. And will be collecting a lot of money, too.
This is going to mean that a lot of cars in my neighborhood that were not parked on the street are now going to be there and it means that in a lot of areas there will be a dearth of parking space. Streets will be jammed. The neighborhood choked with cars. An end to civilization as we know it. Well, sort of.
The point being that I wonder at the intention of the law. When the parkway is four feet wide, a strip of grass with a short ramp leading to and sidewalk and a home’s driveway, I can understand why you would not want anyone parking there. You can’t without hanging into the street or on the sidewalk. However wouldn’t the rule be better crafted if that was the purpose, keep cars off the grass, the sidewalk, and hanging partially into the street. Then areas that have driveways through the ‘parkway’ could park cars in the driveways without fear of citation.
My councilman has authored a potential regulation that would allow people to purchase permits to park BLOCKING their own driveways, thus increasing the amount of on street space substantially. However this new ordinance has been in research for over a year. So who knows.
The ‘parking in parkways” issue is a rule that either needs to be explained or needs to be changed. However, I’m not holding my breath, just breaking the law every time I park my car in my driveway to wash it, unload it, run inside to pick up the briefcase I always forget, or tell a visitor to park off the street and give others more room.
I have copied my councilman with this, but them I’m not holding my breath for action since we are into year two on the ‘blocking my own driveway permit” and in year five plus getting the streets resurfaced (its been 25 since they were replaced and the curbs are original, probably 60 plus and crumbling). At least the pot holes slow down the traffic.
JVH
One Response
The same law exists in South Australia but is rarely breached but even more rarely enforced. Where the vehicles are parked is not part of the owners property, that starts somewhere past the sidewalk. So you can’t have exclusive use of the public road which takes in not just the paved bit but also the grass and the sidewalk, at least not here and in Westwood too it seems. It makes sense and is consistent with the notion that a property owner has a right to access a road from their property but can’t exclude others or exclusively use the adjoining road, merely because it adjoins.