From The Inbox: Alternate Side Parking, Double Parking, And Other Parking Nightmares

Parking is one of the more horrible pastimes that New Yorkers have dealt with in the past century. There are a million rules, fines and, what is worse, so few precious spots to cram your car into. Sheepshead Bites reader Rafi Greenstein sent us this message along with the two photographs:

Reason number #50058 to hate NYC. I spend up to 20 minutes on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday looking for a parking space on the correct side of the street sometimes I get lucky but sometimes I have no choice but to park on the side where I will have to move at 12 p.m. At 12 p.m. I have no choice like many other drivers to double park I leave a big note with my phone number in case somebody needs to move. Now alternate side ends at 1:30 p.m. If I do not move at exactly that moment or sit in my car for 5 minutes before I get $150 ticket. If I had decided to stay on the wrong side of the street I would have gotten a $65 ticket and 5 minutes leeway both before and after alternate side.

Now, this is something I’m on the fence about. While the standard is obviously screwed up – Rafi should not have been penalized more than if had more blatantly broken rules by refusing to move for street cleaning – I’m also continually irked by those that think it’s okay to double park on street cleaning days. What do you think?