SIM PUBLISHING - Parking By-laws

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POOP FROM THE MARE OF VANADA

YOU'RE NOT PARKING BY-LAWS

I live in the West End, where the City has implemented the West End Parking Permit. There are similar permits in different neighbourhoods around the city. In the West End, 85% of the on-street parking is permanently allocated to permit parking. You can only (supposedly) get a permit if you are a resident. No visitor parking is allowed in this 85% at any time. The remaining 15% of on-street parking is available for visitors if they can find it, although permit holders are also allowed to park there.

In effect, the permit holders have complete rights to 100% of all private parking (surface or underground), plus complete rights to 85% of all street parking, plus equal rights as visitors to the remaining 15% of all remaining parking spots. Isn't that a bit much?

A visitor cannot park all day in a visitor spot in the West End. The tiny 15% that is allocated to visitors is 2 hours only during the day. After six p.m. a visitor can park overnight, but so can anyone with a resident permit, so these spaces disappear instantly.

Typical pieces of crap with permits stored on the street.

This was ticketed for not moving for street cleaning. It should have been compacted.
It's been moved a car-length or two twice in a couple of years.
This piece of shit has been moved to 800 block Broughton for the past few months, thanks asshole.

Here's another piece of shit stored on the street (note red car behind, per above).
Eventually somebody slammed this backwards onto the curb, to create space for people actually wanting to park.

On the other hand, the permit parkers can leave their cars on the street in their 85% of permanently allocated spaces for as long as they want. There are many cars in the West End that sit there for months without moving. They are usually most visible in the fall when leaves are falling. This isn't parking, it is long term storage. But for the low low price of an annual permit, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying the same price every month for underground parking. The result is that on-street parking is plugged, and the underground parking lots are empty. Fabulous policy, Mare, who thought this through? And whenever and wherever possible the mare's evil forces wipe out on-street parking spaces, on both sides of Robson Street between Burrard and Hornby, for example. Now there's a row of white poles. Perhaps it's a "memorial" to parking meter people or something. Never mind the hundreds of parking spaces lost to some cable company's rental bicycles.

Permits are only available to folks who have their cars registered with a West End address. There are very limited locations where you can actually get these permits. There are no permits available for rental cars nor do they have any sort of resident privileges like MODO. As a result, if I rent a car and need to park overnight, it's almost impossible to find a spot. I've spent up to 45 minutes driving around and around looking for something, often ending up blocks from my home while there is empty permit parking available right outside my door.

So, how about some constructive suggestions?

One
Revise the ratio of permit to non-permit parking to something more reasonable, like 70% resident / 30% visitor.

Two
Having intelligently adjusted the 85/15 ratio to 70/30, change the rule for the 30% so that residential permit holders cannot park in that 30% AT ANY TIME. After all, they already have 100% of all private and 70% of all on-street parking, enough is enough, give the rest of us a break.

Three
Raise the price of an on-street parking permit to at least, say, $365.00 a year (only $1.00 per day). This will give the on-street car storage dickheads an incentive not to leave their piece of crap out there for months on end. What's a buck a day? If you're not driving it get rid of it. However, evidence to the contrary continues to prove that people this stupid don't really care.

Four
Give the city's eager parking enforcers the right to mark and tow away any vehicle that is clearly stored and not parked on the road. These people have parking passes, not storage licences. A vehicle that hasn't moved in a month or more, or that hasn't been moved as required for street cleaning or tree limbing, should qualify for towing.

Five
Allow rental cars (just like MODO co-op cars) the right to park in any residential permit zone in Vancouver. Folks aren't going to go out and rent a car just to get free parking, they rent when they have to. This would be a simple matter of creating a rental car permit sticker, perhaps, and golly gee get another sourch of revenue for the Mare from car rental companies that want their fleet to have this privilege.

Six
Sell one-use-only resident parking passes that can be purchased in advance (when the permit sellers are actually open, and at my convenience not theirs) and then punched to show current date and/or time, and left in the car's window to allow parking in a permit zone. This would allow visitors with un-permitted vehicles to pay for limited use of resident parking. Convenient for residents and visitors alike, because they can be purchased in advance and on hand when needed. This would also be an easy source of brand-new revenue for the city right out of the blue. Just print and sell passes, nothing further required. There are lots of empty resident-only spaces on the street. It's a stroke of genius, just give me 10% of the take.

Digital rendering of proposed pickup/dropoff pullout on Barclay St.

Seven
As a suggestion, while the boys are out hacking and hewing on the roads to create traffic-enraging circles and intersection blockades, why not consider putting in small pull-outs in selected locations like the middle of the 1300 block Barclay Street (see above)? This would allow taxi's and other vehicles like handivans that are picking up or dropping off passengers to pull safely out of the way from other traffic. Drivers honk all the time when a car stops, but the cars have no option!

A complete waste of money, stupidly spent.

Eight
Quit wiping out on-street parking with absolutely retarded and total waste-of-money projects like this! What is this for? After eighty years this road suddenly needed this to happen? Please note the little "ditch" formed between this and the boulevard, which fills with crap the city won't clean. Also, this photo was taken prior to installation of the smoker's bench, whose users provide an endless supply of garbage all around. Another $100,000.00 blown to permanently wipe out three parking spaces. Why? Why?

Oh yes, note that this obscenity is directly in line with the sidewalk coming from the front door of the adjacent apartment. Reaching the street to get in a cab or handivan, for example, is now impossible for the handicapped, and difficult and messy for anybody. But who cares about that in the Mare's office? Nothing will stop the war on cars!