As many people know, the city of Madison has this ridiculous policy of prohibiting parking on one side of the street between 1 a.m. and 7 a.m.from November to April The alleged justification is to facilitate snow plowing on the couple of days a year when the city undertakes a "general plowing." The rest of the time the only activity is motor-driven parking cops driving around looking for cars that happen to be on the "wrong" side of the road.
The fine for being on the "wrong" side of the road is $20, if paid in the first couple of days, and goes up to $30 soon thereafter. The downtown area is exempt, and moving cars there is only necessary during "snow emergencies." Why not convert the entire city to a "snow emergency" zone? I think the reason is that the city generates a large chunk of revenue from those caught by this policy. Even more interesting, the one time the city did a "general plowing" in the recent past, the parking monitors did NOT ticket wrong-side parkers, and it caused problems on my street at least. Again, what is the purpose of this policy? The official city policy, as relayed by Ald. Judy Olson, is that it is important to have this policy in place for clearing the streets the one or two times a year general plowings occur. Wouldn't it make more sense to switch the entire city to a "snow emergency" rule and up the fines for those who don't move their cars on plowing nights? (I noticed Chicago, for instance, has signs on streets saying something like "move your car if it snows two inches.") Having made a short story long, I am requesting info on how much pollution is emitted by starting a car engine and then shutting it off 30 seconds after the car is moved across the street? Since I don't own a car, I am not personally affected, but plan to attempt to get the city to amend this obsolete policy, because of the unnecessary global warming emissions and because the policy seems to be discriminatory against the denser near-downtown, i.e., yet another city policy favoring suburban areas. I would be curious to know what percentage of the registrations ticketed come from near-downtown areas, where there are more rentals and two-unit conversions, and virtually no two-car-wide driveways and other amenities that make this policy less of a problem in more suburban areas. Plus near-downtown areas have a much higher percentage of people who use means other than their own motor vehicle to transport themselves, and may not remember to move their vehicle to the other side of the street when they get back for the night. Feedback encouraged. tim _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
