Beating Tickets

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Page 11

SNIPPETS (Column)

Beating Tickets

By MARC HAEFELE

For nearly five years, I owned an example of what someone once called the worst car ever made. Actually, my little Renault 5 “Le Car” was pretty reliable for a European mini-vehicle of the early 1980s—which may not be saying all that much.

But it did endure 30,000 miles a year of hard use with a few overheating problems—usually remediable with a screwdriver, jackknife and some radiator hose. And it was still running fine when I sold it for not much with 150,000 miles on it. Which was probably a lot more miles than most 1980s VW Rabbits or Fiat 128s ever attained.

I did not buy the car for its durability, though. I bought it because the Renault Le Car was the shortest car you could buy and I was a reporter in Greater New York. Its tiny size meant that in the quest for inner city parking spaces, I could follow VW Beetles around and park where they could not. Or even in leftover areas that did not quite rate as parking spaces—spaces so small that no one had thought to put up a no-parking sign. Sometimes my parking arrogance made law-enforcement people scowl, but I never got a ticket.

I recalled that car fondly as I read of Mayor Villaraigosa’s new bid to boost parking ticket revenues in the Times. The mayor is asking for a $10 increment, which isn’t going to much alleviate the city’s near- $240 million shortfall, but the report used the phrase “small but important dent” in the deficit. The paper also reported that the commonest violation—parking in a street sweeping zone—would be up by 73 percent with the new hike since 2005. This is about four times the inflation rate over seven years. Other violations would have risen by a total of 94 percent—nearly doubling since 2005. But of course there is no cost of living allowance when it comes to parking tickets.

When it comes to constituencies to torment with de facto tax increases, the Los Angeles automotive population is certainly a serviceable one—larger by far per capita than New York City’s. So you’d think it might rise up against this impost. But of course when we actually earn ourselves a ticket, we are mere miscreants. No one will run for office on our behalf. The nasty paper under your wiper can inspire sympathy, but no unity. I expect it will be a long time, if ever, before habitual parking violators will hire themselves a lobbyist at City Hall to mitigate their woes. Perhaps it’s lucky the ticket fines don’t start at $100, instead of just heading in that general direction. And note that those rising ticket fines have been accompanied by much tougher scofflaw enforcement. Think of those cast metal boots.

But there is something much more serious at the root of the parking problem, as noted by renters’ activist Larry Gross. That is the effect of the city’s densification. For decades now, single-family homes have been replaced by small apartment houses, which are in turn replaced by new-built large apartment and condo complexes. Some of these may have adequate parking, many do not (there has even been a visionary tendency to build housing complexes with scant or no parking, in hopes the tenants will have to use the skimpy local public transit services). In any case, there are a lot more car-owning people crammed into most of our neighborhoods.

But one thing no one has been building for a very long time is additional curbside parking spaces. And a huge quantity of what curbside there is has been ravaged by the scourge of neighborhood preferential parking.

So now, all over town, from Manchester Boulevard in South LA all the way up to Devonshire Street in the North Valley, we have the morning parking crawl on street-cleaning days as thousands of motorists try to find spaces for their cars on unsanctioned sides of the street. Just like old-time New Yorkers.

How well I know. I’ve been there. And I know there are still tiny little cars you can buy to ease your pain. While you wait for the L.A. Mass Transit System of our Eternal Tomorrow.