Parking Joke!

Somerville parking is a joke. I got a ticket for parking on the street during street sweeping, so I did a little research.

There are some people who think "street sweeping" was an ordinance passed solely to increase parking tickets. And I believe it!

So one side of my street requires that you not park there the first and third Fridays of the month. The other side of the street requires that you not park there the second and fourth Mondays of the month.

There is also an ordinance that says you can't park in the same spot for more than 48 hours. So I REALLY need to move my car, but the only spaces open are on the even side of the street, and street sweeping there is tomorrow morning.

I read some stories online about street sweeping. One guy said he left a bar, and saw a cop giving everyone tickets for street sweeping. This was on a Friday. Problem is, the street wasn't a Friday street, it was a Monday street. So he pointed this out to the cop, who said oops, and walked away, leaving all those cars with tickets.

A lot of the streets do the third Tuesday and the fourth Wednesday, which often fall right together. So Tuesday you have to frantically move your car to one side, then before the crack of dawn on Wednesday, you have to move your car to the other side.

How are you supposed to keep track of it? Well there's a web site called Boston Sweeper that will e-mail you the day you need to move your car. Fantastic, but I suspect Somerville cops are using it as well, so that they know where to go to write the tickets.

There are countless stories of people getting tickets at say 8:28 am, when street sweeping doesn't start until 8:30 am.

So logically they should appeal, right? Well, it costs $240 to appeal a $50 ticket.

I really, really need to sell my car. No one wants a pristine Miata Shinsen for below blue book value? Come on guys! Miatas are FUN!