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posted 11/23/09 12:50 PM | updated 11/23/09 12:50 PM
Featured Post! | Views: 75 | Comments : 2 | Politics

City's Parking Fine Increase is Unlikely to Tamp Down on Cap Hill Parking Anarchy

By Jeremy M. Barker
Arts Editor
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Looking east of the intersection of Bellevue & Thomas on Capitol Hill. The cars on the left have all been ticketed after more than 24 hours of being parked illegally.

The Slog mentioned this morning that the city council is likely to vote to raise parking fines by $4 across the board this afternoon, and to judge by the view outside this writer's apartment, that's not nearly enough to fix the problem. Signs clearly mark that there's no parking on the left (north) side of the street in the above photo, but on Sunday, one person (who left before being ticketed) parked there, and ever since cars have lined up in an act of monkey-see, monkey-do parking anarchy.

Interestingly, SDOT is actually trying to make parking legal on the north side of Thomas, Harrison, and Republican Streets [PDF of proposed changes] as part of their new Capitol Hill Community Parking Program, though it's hard to envision how services will get through the already narrow streets (even without north-side parking, it's impossible to pass garbage trucks on these streets).

The changes are currently open to public comment, though a friend pursued a series of inquiries to SDOT a few weeks ago to try to determine what public comments achieve. Short of stating they consider all community input, it appears SDOT, unlike some other agencies, has no regulations requiring it to respond.

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Tags: capitol hill parking, seattle department of transportation, north-side street parking, thomas street, harrison, republican + add tags
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sweet!
that's $156 dollars more into the city coffers! nice work my people.
Comment by matt davis
1 day ago
( 0 votes)
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RE: sweet!
Gotta fill that budget hole somehow...
Comment by Jeremy M. Barker
1 day ago
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