Rome Police Use Twitter To Battle Illegal Parking

cartechboy writes "Illegal parking has always been a major problem in Rome. More than half of Rome's 2.7 million residents use private vehicles, and the ancient city has a staggering ratio of 70 cars per 100 residents. So many residents park, uh, creatively. But now authorities think they've found a way to fight bad parking using social media. Basically, they've asked residents to post photos of bad parking jobs to Twitter. In December, the Italian cops began encouraging smart phone users to snap pics of illegally parked cars and tweet those photos to the department's Twitter account. The new system, which was created by Raffaele Clemente, Rome's chief of traffic police, seems to be working. In the first 30 days, police received more than 1,000 complaints tweeted to their account; (one example is here). Officials were able to respond to around 740 and hand out citations."

Comments

Town planning - lack of.

[FriendlyLurker]

What irks me is the lack of town planning for cars in European cities then the incompetent authorities act like it is all the citizens fault. I get that they have ancient medieval town centers that are almost impossible to modify - but that is no excuse for not providing adequate amounts of free to almost free just out-of-town parking and efficient cheap public transport into the centers (efficient does not mean it has to be profitable in the direct sense).

Singapore for example with so little space has pioneered high rise cheap parking for all out in the suburbs and electronic pay to enter town centers that really increased the quality of life in the inner city, or so I hear.

Don't get me started on the last century traffic lights on timers and no trigger sensors of any kind in sight even at the pedestrian crossings. Christmas lights I like to call them. The amount of petrol they must waste stopping scores of cars for no reason must be mind-boggling.

/rant off.

Re:Town planning - lack of.

[Sique]

What irks me is the lack of town planning for cars in European cities then the incompetent authorities act like it is all the citizens fault.

First, those towns were planned when there were no cars at all. Second, some towns tried to restructure itself into a more car friendly town, and the result was a less human friendly town. For some reasons, the most searched for towns are those with a horrible parking situation. So blame who you want, towns with a not adequate parking situation fare better in general, because they seem to get the general idea how to operate a town, and one aspect seems to not concentrate on cars too much.

Re:Town planning - lack of.

[godrik]

Whie I entirely aggree with you that the main problem comes from the city lacking the proper parking spaces, that makes it no excuse to park like a complete douche.

Re:Town planning - lack of.

[jwdb]

What irks me is the lack of town planning for cars in European cities then the incompetent authorities act like it is all the citizens fault. I get that they have ancient medieval town centers that are almost impossible to modify - but that is no excuse for not providing adequate amounts of free to almost free just out-of-town parking and efficient cheap public transport into the centers (efficient does not mean it has to be profitable in the direct sense).

You're not looking hard enough. Most of the major cities I've driven to in the EU (Belgium and the Netherlands, primarily, over five years) had significant parking on the outskirts of town (never free, land costs money) near the end of the city metro lines. Drop the car there, take the tram, and enjoy a city built at a human scale. Or even better, take the train right into downtown.

I've moved back to the US recently, and I dearly miss those compact cities. I'm in a small city in Georgia now and it's disgusting how much prime downtown space is wasted on empty parking lots. I'd much rather have no parking at all rather than too much, as then you can at least walk or bike.

Don't get me started on the last century traffic lights on timers and no trigger sensors of any kind in sight even at the pedestrian crossings.

Traffic lights is a different matter, and apparently depends on your driving style. I never had a problem flowing through light after light back home, but here I'm constantly being stopped. I'm sure I'll eventually get used to the timing here, as you would over there.

Re:Town planning - lack of.

[cheesybagel]

You keep thinking like this is the US where literally no one lives in the center which is composed of office spaces. This is not the case in European cities. Many people live in the center and quite often their building has no parking space at all. Because it was built in the XIXth century or whatever when people did not need such things. And the streets are often narrow because horses needed less space to move around.

Re:Privacy Risks

[megabeck42]

At risk of being put online? Don't people risk exposing their license plates every time they back out of the garage?

I think the real concern is, "This just puts millions of illegally parking individuals at risk of being publicly shamed."

The best protection for any one concerned their license plate may end up online seems pretty simple and obvious: think ahead, be considerate, and don't park like an asshole.

Re:Privacy Risks

[rollingcalf]

A picture is often more useful than a verbal complaint when the police are evaluating whether a given parking situation actually is a violation, and the exact location where it occurred.

And for citizens armed with a cellphone camera and Twitter, it's faster for them to post a pic than to sit on the non-emergency line for several minutes, first on hold for 5 minutes, then some more minutes to describe the vehicle and the location.

Re:Wrong ration

[Anonymous Coward]

ancient city has a staggering ratio of 70 cars per 100 residents

I don't find that staggering. What I do find staggering is that the seems to be a ratio of about 70 cars per every parking space. Rome is a place where triple parking is pretty much routine.

Rome has enormous public transportation problems for 2 main reasons :

- one is that its surface public bus fleet is seriously small for a city that in extension is second to London.
- building a subway network is very difficult not for engineering problems but for historical problems. The Law makes it impossible to continue an engineering project should you end up coming into contact with ancient Roman ruins. And digging in Rome is a guarantee that you'll end up upon some ancient Roman ruins. So each time you want to build a garage, a new subway station it is a roll of dice. And when the works stops you can't destroy the ruins to continue the engineering project, you are not allow to move the ruins etc... So it all ends un in a standstill for years or decades to come. This is one aspect where fanatical respect for historical ruins is seriously harming any evolution of Rome as a city. Sometimes you need to let go of ancient things to build for the present. And that's not the case in Italy. The past takes precedence over the present. And so you end up in these absurd situations where Roman ruins end up having more "rights" than modern roman citizens do. With the consequence that living in Rome is hell. I can guarentee that no Roman likes living in Rome. Tourists yeah but they only stay 1-2 weeks. Day to day life in Rome is hell. Think Atlanta snow congested caos every single day of the year. It would drive crazy anybody.