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Rome Police Use Twitter To Battle Illegal Parking

Posted by samzenpus on from the shame-your-neighbor dept.

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."

3 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Town planning - lack of. by FriendlyLurker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Town planning - lack of. by Sique · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    2. Re:Town planning - lack of. by jwdb · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.