Today a friend shared with me this article about parking citations in San Francisco have made a comeback from the depths of the pandemic. March of this year was the first time the number of tickets breached 100,000 since the start of COVID. Last month the city took in $8.5 million in citation revenue! That seems like a lot of money to me, surely more than enough to pay for the dozens or so meter maids.
The article goes on to say that most of the tickets are from street cleaning, a fine San Francisco tradition. No other city I know of have such a rigorous cleaning schedule. If you street-park your car in San Francisco, you have move it off one side of the street every week for about two hours. The cleaning machine can then drive by and do its thing. Many times I’ve seen neighbors forget the schedule and end up with a ticket. I avoid this by entering the street cleaning days onto my calendar for the whole year, at the beginning of the year
Lucky for my neighborhood, street cleaning is only a twice-a-month affair.
I have to say it is nice to have clean streets. And I’m sure those are some good paying jobs there at the Department of Public Works operating those cleaning trucks. But let’s not kid ourselves: street cleaning is also a money generator for San Francisco. I just hope that revenue go towards something productive vis a vis the roads, like taking care of potholes in a timely manner. I think that’s a fine bargain: the forgetful parkers amongst us subsidizing the upkeep of our streets.
Oldest allies.