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As I have already said a few times, Caughtya.org only focuses on people parking in accessible spaces without displaying a parking placard. The problem being of course that even if a person doesn't look like having an impairment justifying them using the parking spot, they actually may have any number of conditions making it perfectly legal and valid for them to park there. This doesn't mean we don't think there isn't abuse and misuse of parking placard. We're convinced it happens on a regular basis.

While we're not going to tackle that problem on this site, it is important enough that it should be discussed. I don't think there's any easy solution, but there certainly could be ways to ease the process.

One thing that seems to happen a lot is a familly or friends borrowing of said placards. It's not unusual for a son to use grandma's placard, a wife to use their husband's, etc. The State of Illinois came up with the beginning of a solution on this one. The parking placards now have a coding system identifying age range and gender of the permit holder. If a guy in his 20's is using a permit issued to a woman in her 60's, it then becomes obvious to the parking enforcement officer that there is abuse.

One might argue that a spouse might park in an accessible space, put up their partner's placard, and leave to go get their partner (who happens to be the mobility parking badge holder), giving the appearance that they are misusing the parking space. This is a potential problem which could be easily explained.

Beyond the "borrowing" of placards, there apparently is a traffic in stolen parking permits. While simple codes such as the ones implemented in Illinois might help limit misuse of stolen placards, perhaps having a central registry of stolen parking placard numbers might be an idea. Of course, this might cost a fair bit to implement, needing hardware, software, training, etc. I think the biggest problem is probably one of infrastructure and jurisdiction.

Adrian explains the problem as it happens in the UK:

[I]n the UK its even more complex because of the dysfunctional London Boroughs. Firstly, within the Council, Parking Services (who employ the parking wardens) don’t talk to Social Services (who issue the blue badges) - so when a blue badge is stolen (which happens often) the parking wardens aren’t charged with a list of stolen permits. So there are hundreds of stolen badges and their validity is never questioned. Worse still, even if there was a system to police stolen badges, the London Boroughs or UK Councils don’t work together.. so if you have a stolen permit originally issued in Hackney and you park in Islington, the Parking Wardens can;t even radio into the control centre to validate them.

This is frustrating for people with disabilities, but is probably just as frustrating for those parking wardens that are indeed interested in monitoring for valid parking placards.

It might be easier on wardens if stolen badge numbers went into a database, accessible through a wireless device. Imagine one database of stolen parking placard numbers for an entire country (or state in the US). A warden with a PDA equipped with wireless connection could very quickly search for a placard number and see whether it was stolen or not. The advantages of this are tremendous. But it would mean that the different jurisdictions would have to work *together*. That might be the biggest barrier of all

In terms of hardware/software it seems to us that any people doing parking enforcement already have hardware at their disposal. Police officers have computer gear that lets them access all kind of information. City Council wardens in many places are using handheld computers which prints out the parking citation.

Heck, some enterprising soul might even be able to setup an online database, accessible by WAP enabled devices (like a cell phone...), making this real easy. The complication here would be to receive the information about the stolen badge numbers from the Powers That Be. But it's not inconceivable to make something like that happen.

This would cause "extra" work for parking enforcement staff, as they would have to look closely at each placard, to:

1. ensure that it hasn't expired
2. find the permit number and ensure it isn't on the stolen registry

This might be difficult for often over-worked parking officials. One might argue that checking expiry dates as well as merely having a parking placard displayed should be part and parcel of the job. Would adding a check of a database registry increase the work-load significantly? It's hard to tell without doing that job, but it's just as hard to imagine that it would increase that work-load.

Of course, not all areas have overworked wardens. To whit: The owner of CSI: Arlington County points out that in Arlington County, Virginia:

The Parking Enforcement Unit employs 29 officials who are responsible for enforcing the county's parking laws.

In contrast, the Traffic Unit, which is responsible for the "safe...flow of traffic in the County", employs only 11 officers.

So, many questions, a few solutions. What can we do to improve the situation, given we are mere responsible citizen without real obvious power?

Talking to the people in charge might be a good start. If enough people voice the problems, and offer suggestions, and all these problems and solutions point in the same direction, perhaps something good will come out of it. Who knows? As long as people remain silent, nothing is going to happen.

[tags]Disability, Parking, Disability+Parking, Abuse, Accessible, Parking+Permit, Traffic, Warden, Traffic+Warden, Officer, Blog[/tags]

Post Details:
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 26th, 2006 and is filed under Drive-by. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Tags:
Abuse, Accessible, Blog, Disability, Disability Parking, Officer, Parking, Parking Permit, Traffic, Traffic Warden, Warden