Double Parking

[rocksniffer]

Scot,

i can see your point about people taking more than one spot in a limited parking area, like at the courthouse here in our town...that must be a pain in the ass for people who work there or frequent that area regularly.

my niece delivers for a living. she drives a full sized pick-up truck and she often will stop in street much like a UPS or FEDex truck and dash to her rack then back in vehicle and gone...so really not parking, however she also will block an extra space in certain situations so that she is not blocked by others coming and going in the parking area...for example straight in parking at a gas station can get blocked by people at the pumps so she will park diagonally thus blocking 2 spaces

in open parking lots, i tend to park away because i don't want to be squeezed, my truck has suicide rear doors consequently i have to open my front doors fully. In a normal space with cars on both sides it can be cramped...so i park away and have plenty of room

[zelticgar]

In New England we have a form of asshole behavior with cars in the winter. After every snow storm a small subset of the population decides not to clear off the snow on top of their car. This creates a ticking time bomb of sheets of ice spraying all over the highway. Night quite as obnoxious as double parking but close. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

54 minutes ago, zelticgar said:

In New England we have a form of asshole behavior with cars in the winter. After every snow storm a small subset of the population decides not to clear off the snow on top of their car. This creates a ticking time bomb of sheets of ice spraying all over the highway. Night quite as obnoxious as double parking but close. 

Yeah, when it snows in the south that happens all the time because people don't think to brush off the tops of their cars.

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 hours ago, zelticgar said:

In New England we have a form of asshole behavior with cars in the winter. After every snow storm a small subset of the population decides not to clear off the snow on top of their car. This creates a ticking time bomb of sheets of ice spraying all over the highway. Night quite as obnoxious as double parking but close. 

The worst is on the tractor trailers

[aceluby]

I like to park right next to them, in the same diagonal way, as close as possible, and hope they get to their car before me to see that their taking of two spots so someone wouldn't park next to them was all for naught.

[Datepalm]

In bad parker trolling, I just saw a photo of a terrible double park in Jerusalem, where someone stuck a condom and a note saying 'please don't reproduce' under the wiper.

[The guy from the Vale]

Datepalm's in the right on that. The solution to a lack of parking spots is not more parking spots. The only solution is better (higher volume, more frequent, more comfortable...) public transport. Because for every additional parking spot designed, there will be three people buying a new car because now they'll have a parking spot for it (or so they think)

[AndrewJ]

On 1/8/2017 at 8:03 AM, Lord Sidious said:

I tend to just park in a spot away from other cars if I can as I don't want my car damaged, there's not really an excuse for not parking in a bay correctly if one is available.

You mean you don't have a private parking spot for your shuttle? And you just have random storm-troopers leaving passive-aggressive notes on your windshield, if you accidentally go over the line?

 

[Dr. Pepper]

Not really double parking, but I hate people who drive SUVs and trucks.  99% of the time they don't need it and those behemoths only serve as dangers on the road, gas guzzlers, or to annoy people in parking lots or garages.

The place I hate it worst is my local Children's Hospital where I tend to spend a lot of time.  They don't have enough parking to meet demand so they jacked up the prices for the lot and then repainted to make the spaces smaller.  The spaces are perfectly suited for cars and even crossovers or small SUVs but people are dumb assholes and think they have to drive these massive things for reasons so it ends up being a bunch of folks who either take up two spaces because they literally can't fit or squeezing into a spot and then everyone else squeezing into a spot and everyone having to crawl out through their trunk and pull their sick kids out through their tunk because no one can open their doors due to every other space filled with a Ford f-250 or a fucking suburban.  I wish we could start banning these vehicles from most roadways and all parking lots and force the occupants to start utilizing public transportation.  

[Datepalm]

A place like a children's hospital is one of the spots where there's a particularly high value to having good car access and convenient parking...but, as you describe, it's being crowded out of usefullness. You want people to be able to quickly and easily get their sick kid to the hospital in their (one!) car or cab or whatever, and for that we need everyone else to stop taking up road space and parking space because they can't get a loaf of bread within a mile walk of their house or don't have public transport of have their road use massively subsidized!

[Jen'ari]

16 hours ago, AndrewJ said:

You mean you don't have a private parking spot for your shuttle? And you just have random storm-troopers leaving passive-aggressive notes on your windshield, if you accidentally go over the line?

 

I only tend to get notes if I send the Royal Guard off to buy coffee and leave it unattended.

[Swordfish]

3 hours ago, Datepalm said:

A place like a children's hospital is one of the spots where there's a particularly high value to having good car access and convenient parking...but, as you describe, it's being crowded out of usefullness. You want people to be able to quickly and easily get their sick kid to the hospital in their (one!) car or cab or whatever, and for that we need everyone else to stop taking up road space and parking space because they can't get a loaf of bread within a mile walk of their house or don't have public transport of have their road use massively subsidized!

If time is of the essence for a child getting to the hospital, they should call an ambulance, or drop it off at the door.

 

[Dr. Pepper]

58 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

If time is of the essence for a child getting to the hospital, they should call an ambulance, or drop it off at the door.

 

This is stupid and you're describing an entirely different situation.  Calling for an ambulance is for specific things and is not the same as needing to get a child quickly and safely from a vehicle into a hospital.  Hospitals serve MANY more functions than simply extreme emergencies.  And besides, not all emergency room visits will require an ambulance.  Ambulance rides should be saved for those who need them.  

I frequently cannot safely take my medically fragile children out of the car for their various specialty appointments at the children's hospital because of assholes with large SUVs or trucks that take up too much space.  Reasons a parent might need to get their child quickly from the car into the building might have to do with environmental allergies, cold weather, noise, compromised immune systems, etc.  And of course, being quick in an underground parking garage isn't all that's needed, we parents also need to get these kids inside safely. There is nothing fucking safe about having to pull babies out of the car through the trunk or hatchback.  One time one of my kids had a lot of specialized equipment and couldn't just go through the back hatch so I had to actually take him out of the car before I even pulled into the spot and he had to sit in his stroller alone with his equipment for a few moments because there was no other for me to do it due to the assholes with big vehicles when almost none of them actually require something that large.

[James Arryn]

Anyone here been to Rome?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On 1/11/2017 at 6:37 PM, James Arryn said:

Anyone here been to Rome?

Wish I had been, but no, why?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

The moments you wish you had a baseball bat. Or when you have a residential parking area and some moron decides it's cool to use up the area and place his car transverse and you can't get your car out.

#firstworldproblems

For the record. I know the catharsis hypothesis is bs, and I am not condoning wilful damage to property, but just to make a point.

[Altherion]

On 1/11/2017 at 11:47 AM, Datepalm said:

A place like a children's hospital is one of the spots where there's a particularly high value to having good car access and convenient parking...but, as you describe, it's being crowded out of usefullness. You want people to be able to quickly and easily get their sick kid to the hospital in their (one!) car or cab or whatever, and for that we need everyone else to stop taking up road space and parking space because they can't get a loaf of bread within a mile walk of their house or don't have public transport of have their road use massively subsidized!

I haven't been to an American hospital where the parking lot is open to people who want a parking spot so that they can shop nearby -- it's usually reserved for patients (although I suppose just like everything else in the US, this might vary by state). The problem is that the new size of the parking spots is too small for the typical cars of the clientele. I've actually seen this more often in Europe. European cars are typically smaller than American ones, but not always and every once in a while there are enough big cars in one place to cause a problem.

It's actually worse with roads. Near my former apartment, there are certain narrow segments on a two-way street which hosts a bus route. There's enough room for two buses going in opposite directions to pass each other, but just barely. It's the fastest route from that apartment to work so I took it, but I was always a bit wary of meeting a bus on those segments because, in the absence of another bus, they sometimes take up a part of the lane going in the other direction or at least drive right on the dividing line.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Just had my truck towed to the place I'm apartment/dog sitting, tow truck couldnt get it into the parking space in the alley (well could have but the guy didn't want to unhook the truck in the middle of the alley and then let me move it with a come-along) so had to drop it one the street.  But he could only get it like 2 ft from the curb so I tried to roll it downhill closer to the curb but with no power steering clipped the curb with the back tire before itncod straighten out.  

So the truck is sitting a like a 25 degree angle to the curb, rear tire tight but front one line 20 inches from the curb.  With an extension cord running out an upstairs window across the sidewalk and plugged into the block heater.   Pulled the batteries out to charge them, caught some guy out there trying to open the hood to see what he could take about an hour ago.  

The parking job looks like a drunk did it.  Just hoping I can get this thing fired up before the cops try to tow it.  Thinking of asking the neighbors to park right to the truck so no one can tow it once I hear them up (about an hour and a half before dawn here).

 

[Datepalm]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

I haven't been to an American hospital where the parking lot is open to people who want a parking spot so that they can shop nearby -- it's usually reserved for patients (although I suppose just like everything else in the US, this might vary by state). The problem is that the new size of the parking spots is too small for the typical cars of the clientele. I've actually seen this more often in Europe. European cars are typically smaller than American ones, but not always and every once in a while there are enough big cars in one place to cause a problem.

It's actually worse with roads. Near my former apartment, there are certain narrow segments on a two-way street which hosts a bus route. There's enough room for two buses going in opposite directions to pass each other, but just barely. It's the fastest route from that apartment to work so I took it, but I was always a bit wary of meeting a bus on those segments because, in the absence of another bus, they sometimes take up a part of the lane going in the other direction or at least drive right on the dividing line.

Even if the spots are reserved (as I assume they would and should be!) I was referring to road use and parking conditions in general, which has 'trickle down' effects onto each specific situation. You have an urban form that necessitated driving creating untenable pressure on land use for parking which leads to an enternal downtown parking shortage which forces the rare crucial parking lot (like the one belonging to a hospital) to be squeezed for space and forced to draw out very small parking spots which is coupled with a cultural trend for pointless giant cars and you get sick kids doing acrobatics through car boots in parking lots.

My point is, if we had a less perennially not-enough-parking situation in cities, the children's hospital would have enough parking spots, even for stupid giant cars because this is the rare situation where a good parking spot trumps making life incovenient for urban drivers. The only way to have enougb parking spots or enough road space? Counter-intuitively, it's to make less of it.

This means I have a foolproof way of never being pissed off or angry when I'm stuck in traffic or can't find a parking spot or see someone parked in a ridiculous way or blocking traffic in the classic double-park. I just think that being inconvenienced as a driver . by and large, is right, proper and also couldn't be any other way, and notch up a slight uptick in motivation to use public transport or walk next time.

[Larry of the Lawn]

14 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

<Snip>

 

I would be so willing to give up a vehicle for even moderately reliable public transportation to and from places.  Fuck all this nonsense.  The world has moved on!