Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Free Parking

Last month I had to visit the Federal Building downtown. On my way back to my car, I noticed an odd parking space. Take a look at the car parked between the two red cars. Notice anything missing?



I couldn't get a good picture with my mobile, so here's the Street View of the same space. The blue car above is parked between the trees in the center of the picture. Zoom in once for the best view.


View Larger Map

There is no meter for this space. It is not marked with any signage or curb paint to indicate that it is a no parking zone.

I doubt this space was designed as a space for large vehicles such as limousines or box trucks. I assume that the meters were installed from the cross street intersections inward, and this is just the gap left over from choosing to install the double meters.

So the question is, is this free parking? Anyone have any experience with this space? I believe you can see co-blogger CJ's old place in the photo above. Care to weigh in?

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to title this post.

4 comments:

cwk said...

I've seen this before in some other spots downtown. Not sure if its cases where they screwed up and left out a meter, or cases where a meter has been knocked down and not replaced. I have parked in those "spaces" before without being ticketed.

Ricky Domingo said...

Yes! That's what I wanted to hear.

Crossed said...

A broken meter is not a free meter. Technically a broken meter is out of commission and no one should park in its space. They might use the same logic in this situation. However, it appears that it is really only 2 spaces, and the blue car is not parked correctly, even if there is enough space for 3 compact cars. I have found when it comes to parking meters, there is no free lunch. Whatever argument you might have I would guess there is a counter argument, so the question is, "Do you feel lucky?". Is your time worth it to argue it in front of a judge? possibly in the horrible traffic court out on east 10th street? In the end it would be up to whichever DP employee that is walking by writing the ticket (and making minimum wage).

Sarah said...

I once received a parking ticket, with 20 min left on my meter. After being aghast for a moment, I discovered that the ticket was for "parking too far from curb"; however, I drive an extremely small car and was still about a foot closer to the curb on the traffic side than an over-sized SUV parked in front of me. Then I was aghast again. In fact, I was so pissed that I took numerous pictures of the scenario, and then flagged down a cop to complain about it. He ended up calling the parking authority and getting the ticket waived. Lovely Rita is ruthless though.