Reminds me of a frustrating tale: Where I used to live, in New England, there was this daycare run out of a home with a massive parking lot for a driveway. Still, the owner/proprietor instructed parents to park on the sidewalk when dropping off. Not in the driveway, obstructing the sidewalk, but in front of her home, parking much like this, straddling it with their tires like the grass in this photo. There was no sidewalk on the other side of the road.
The effect was to completely obstruct the walkway (which in the winter, the only way around was for kids walking to the elementary and middle school to walk out into the very busy street, which led to the highway on-ramp. 50+ small children ages 5 to 14 walking out in the street in the winter (Nov to May in N.E.) every day so that the daycare owner could have kids dropped into her living room instead of her kitchen.
No amount of complaining to the city ever got her to stop. The officials didn’t see a problem. In fact, when the police and code enforcement came to assess, they parked there too, since her plow guy made it obvious they could park there, and kids walked around their vehicles as well.
What worked? The neighbor across the street was an older gentleman, and he began putting on a high-vis and stopping traffic for the kids. That got police to question why he was stopping traffic on a busy road, who initially came and PARKED THERE TOO to ask him to stop, then an officer finally put the single digit math together and began stopping traffic for him for months, until the city installed bollards at the cost of many thousands for installation, and nobody could drive up on the sidewalk again.
Imagine if they had simply ticketed the drivers and fined the homeowner. Instead, taxpayers foot the bill for police man-hours and a passive aggressive solution that also kept the city sidewalk plow off the sidewalk.
Edit: Just spoke with my sister, who let me know the bollards came out two winters ago and never went back, and the problem is as bad as ever. Fuck cars.
![[meme] I don't park on the road with the plebs](https://lemmings.world/pictrs/image/c616350d-a68e-4218-8ab5-0291c1ce7f5c.jpeg){kind=link}
Reminds me of a frustrating tale: Where I used to live, in New England, there was this daycare run out of a home with a massive parking lot for a driveway. Still, the owner/proprietor instructed parents to park on the sidewalk when dropping off. Not in the driveway, obstructing the sidewalk, but in front of her home, parking much like this, straddling it with their tires like the grass in this photo. There was no sidewalk on the other side of the road.
The effect was to completely obstruct the walkway (which in the winter, the only way around was for kids walking to the elementary and middle school to walk out into the very busy street, which led to the highway on-ramp. 50+ small children ages 5 to 14 walking out in the street in the winter (Nov to May in N.E.) every day so that the daycare owner could have kids dropped into her living room instead of her kitchen.
No amount of complaining to the city ever got her to stop. The officials didn’t see a problem. In fact, when the police and code enforcement came to assess, they parked there too, since her plow guy made it obvious they could park there, and kids walked around their vehicles as well.
What worked? The neighbor across the street was an older gentleman, and he began putting on a high-vis and stopping traffic for the kids. That got police to question why he was stopping traffic on a busy road, who initially came and PARKED THERE TOO to ask him to stop, then an officer finally put the single digit math together and began stopping traffic for him for months, until the city installed bollards at the cost of many thousands for installation, and nobody could drive up on the sidewalk again.
Imagine if they had simply ticketed the drivers and fined the homeowner. Instead, taxpayers foot the bill for police man-hours and a passive aggressive solution that also kept the city sidewalk plow off the sidewalk.
Edit: Just spoke with my sister, who let me know the bollards came out two winters ago and never went back, and the problem is as bad as ever. Fuck cars.