Where I live, many people park at intersections right up to the curb making it almost impossible to see oncoming traffic from the right or left. Really scary when you have a 16-year old driver you're trying to keep safe.
There is a very real reason why most intersections require drivers to park 20-30 feet away. Please think of the safety of others and adhere to this rule.
Great solution but until then I think the gp's point still stands.
We as humans need to ensure our actions are done with care are forethought. You can't control others but you can control yourself and influence others (like this comment attempts to do)
Plus, it's a lot cheaper for all of us if we don't need to constantly redesign once someone figures out how to "beat the game" (see Goodhart's Law). We're social creatures and the Tragedy of the Commons is a much more common occurrence than people think, especially in large cities.
Yes, I've seen some of this. While it certainly helps, it seems like a waste of limited resources. Why can't some people just follow such a simple rule?
But the post saying it's a better method isn't suggesting extra labor to do modifications. That's useful just as pure knowledge, and also it can be applied into future designs or when parts of the road wear out.
A car could push into the first third of it, but visibility would be fine in that case. Trying to use the whole thing in a car would mean you're jutting into the traffic lane, and anyone willing to do that is causing bigger problems. And if a bike parks in the stripes that's fine for visibility too.
In Paris, France, they are replacing all the car parking spaces near intersections with bike ones, which is a lot better for visibility. But that’s a small-ish city where 65%+ of the population don’t even own a car.
It makes sense. It was ridiculous that they were originally proposing ticketing people without there being signage that it was illegal to park there. They need to just paint the curbs.
Is it ridiculous to ticket someone who parks in the middle of Market St if there's no sign that it's illegal?
No. Driving a car is a privilege, and a dangerous one at that, which requires a competency test. It is not unreasonable to expect licensed drivers to know the statewide laws that govern that privilege without reminder signs.
In some ways, yes, though not in many cities like SF, NYC, Chicago, Seattle, etc.
But it's also a chicken and egg problem: often transit is not viable or is too slow precisely because everything is devoted to cars. The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent example - I used to routinely get off the 49 bus and walk faster than it stuck in car traffic, but after the BRT the bus is a much better and faster experience than driving could ever be.
One of the most common reasons for watering down or canceling pedestrian, transit, and biking infra projects is a refusal to negatively impact driving in any way, even if the net societal benefit (especially to lower income households who take transit at much higher rates) is far greater.
Good governance requires sometimes unpopular choices (see Paris's recent bicycle transformation, or SF's recent recall election over the creation of a new public park in place of a redundant street)
> The SF Van Ness BRT is an excellent example - I used to routinely get off the 49 bus and walk faster than it stuck in car traffic
It's funny that you use that particular example considering the SF Supervisors of 1958 are the ones who created that problem by refusing to build the elevated freeway that transit planning engineers correctly envisioned we would need. Tearing down the stub end of it also created the most dangerous intersection in the city at Market & Octavia. As a pedestrian it would be so nice to have cars elevated up off the ground instead of having to wait to cross on foot. A lot of intersections of Octavia and its cross streets don't even allow pedestrian crossing at all lmfao
Imagine you and your spouse both work full time, and you have 1-2 children. And your definition of 'living well' includes having those children learn to swim well, and do some sort of after-school sport, and also do math supplementation because SFUSD teaches math at a really slow pace.
I don't believe any of the above are outlier or unreasonable positions to have.
Yet a family in that situation would severely struggle to fit everything in if they had to rely solely on public transport to get between home, school and after-school activities.
(I grew up in London, where public transport is often faster than driving. In San Francisco, most of my car journeys would take 3-4 times as long by public transport.)
Admittedly, public transport is garbage. And for the time we'd go to La Petite Baleen, a car is 0.5x the time. So in that respect I agree. In Mission Bay everything else is close by.
But I think perhaps if someone told me "We don't live well. I can only take my child to swim class on the weekends" I would think that somewhat strange.
Re: La Petite Baleen: 34 mins vs 1 hour 11 mins for me.
My son's swim school is 20 mins away by car, or 60 mins by public transport.
I take your point that these are first world problems.
But my point is that not having access to a car in San Francisco is a significant inconvenience and it's incorrect to say 'you can live well' without that access. You might not be so inconvenienced that you would say "we don't live well", but there's a 'meh' zone in between the two.
Normally I'd agree with you, but I can pick my swim lesson time and I don't have to worry about headway timing because I know when to leave and the train is timed. For untimed services, certainly I'd believe it.
These are complaints of generality that don't have relevance in the specific case.
There are also international tourists who may have different local parking rules than the ones in SF. Having clear demarcations between allowed and non allowed parking areas makes it easier for everyone to follow the correct rules.
Do you have an rss feed of road rules piped into Anki cards or what?
Or just maybe "driver's license is a privilege that requires you to study and know the rules of the road" is a fallacious claim that rests on pedantic legal formalism and an impoverished sense of human psychology.
No, I don't; there are plenty of places you can't legally park that do not have painted curbs or "No Parking" signage. Do we also need curbs and signage near every fire hydrant? How about every driveway? Can drivers double-park anywhere they want? Should they yield to pedestrians in crosswalks? Etc. etc.
Reviewing the thread, the context is newly enforcing something that might not be illegal in all jurisdictions. Citing different contexts where signage is not always used doesn't change the fact that the discussion focuses on change in common practice in a specific context. In fact, I observe plenty of signage for fire hydrants and driveways in places where people commonly make parking errors.
The question still stands. How do you ensure you detect changes rules of the road in order to maintain your privilege?
>>>>>>> Where I live, many people park at intersections right up to the curb
>>>>>> This is now illegal in some states
>>>>> It's illegal in California but in San Francisco official policy is to not enforce this law.
>>>>> If there's no red paint on the curb, they won't ticket you.
>>>> It was ridiculous that they were originally proposing ticketing people without there being signage that it was illegal to park there.
>>> Why? Having a driver's license is a privilege that requires you to study and know the rules of the road.
>> Do you have an rss feed of road rules piped into Anki cards or what?
> No, I don't; there are plenty of places you can't legally park that do not have painted curbs or "No Parking" signage.
It isn't bizarre that rules and practice vary widely in different cultural contexts. Even your claim is caveated as "most of EU," recognizing that it might not be the same in all places.
In many places in the US, there is a culture of legibility, whereby informational affordances are relevantly and generously provisioned. This allows for more certainty for both facility users and rule enforcers. On the flip side, there are a lot of signs all over the place.
You could argue that people cannot be expected to carry tape measures with them, because their glove compartments are too small.
But the difficulty of judging the distance from the intersection is a factor in a minority of cases.
SFMTA could have chosen to enforce the law but allow a tolerance of 5 feet. That would start providing safety benefits earlier without surprising any driver who made an honest mistake in their estimate of the distance.
Portland does the same thing since most blocks in the older parts of town are 200 feet. Reserving 20 feet at either end would take away a huge chunk of street parking in residential areas built before driveways were common.
It's also why our light rail trains can only be two cars long.
Yes, it is illegal in Washington state and yet, people do it.
Specifically, drivers who are "just running in" to grab a coffee or a pizza or whatever. What they don't understand is even a limited amount of time blocking the view of drivers can be catastrophic.
Parking up to the corner of an intersection is just a really dangerous, selfish thing to do.
There is a very real reason why most intersections require drivers to park 20-30 feet away. Please think of the safety of others and adhere to this rule.