S.F. residents had parked in their driveways for years. Then someone started snitching

San Francisco Chronicle​

19 hours ago

For decades, Larry Reed and his neighbors had squeezed their cars into tight, sloping driveways in San Francisco's Dolores Heights neighborhood. Often the tail ends of the vehicles would extend to the sidewalk. Nobody ever protested, Reed said.
Until about six months ago, when the first complaint rolled in.
'This has never happened in years past,' Reed said, recalling how a somewhat apologetic parking control officer rolled up one day, to assess a report that someone on the unit block of Chattanooga Street had parked a car over the property line. After leaving a warning notice for the culprit, the officer swept the block for other violators, including Reed's gray electric BMW.
'I really try to keep my car so that the space is pretty accessible,' Reed said, noting that he always has parked the same way, flush with the garage door. Inevitably, the back wheels and bumper stick out.
California law forbids parked vehicles from blocking even small portions of public sidewalks, ensuring safe passage for wheelchairs, strollers, seniors with canes and people on crutches, among others. On Chattanooga Street, anyone who flouted the rule got a warning, at minimum.
But as driveway parking enforcement ramped up throughout the city, frustrated residents pushed back. Some believed the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was unfairly cracking down on infractions that didn't really create a safety hazard. Others suspected that a persnickety neighbor might be snitching on them — and in some cases, manipulating the photos attached to the reports.
Sharon Gillenwater has avoided war metaphors when discussing the three citations her family has received for parking in the driveway of their Noe Valley home, worth a total of $324. Technically, the tickets were just, Gillenwater said, conceding that her Volkswagen SUV and her son's Subaru wagon exceed the length of her front stairwell. Still, Gillenwater can't hide her exasperation over what she describes as overzealous punishment.
'We're not fighting the law, we all agree that strollers and disabled people need to pass,' she said. 'But can we just be in the spirit of the law? In our case, there is plenty of room for two wheelchairs to go in tandem down the street.'
At the same time, she and other Noe Valley residents wonder whether someone is trolling them, filing complaint after complaint about driveway parking to demand a response from the SFMTA. Gillenwater has observed that many complaints have text captions with identical font, and some use old photos as evidence. In one case, a resident drew two reports when she and her car were hundreds of miles away in the Sierra. In another example, someone filed a complaint against Gillenwater's son when his Subaru hadn't been in the driveway for two days.
'It's kind of our neighborhood murder mystery,' said Gillenwater's husband, Andrew Keeler, relaying what has become a tense joke.
Searching for clues, some neighbors discovered an app called Solve SF, which uses artificial intelligence to ease the process of filing reports through the city's 311 complaint system. This concept incited suspicion in Noe Valley, where residents typed up five pages of oppositional research on Solve SF, mainly to uncover why the volume of illegal parking complaints in Noe Valley suddenly spiked in June. They blamed the app for wasting 'valuable city resources' (because some complaints don't result in tickets) and said it promotes 'questionable use of gamification of reporting.'
'So someone wrote this whole thing about my app, huh?' said Patrick McCabe, developer of Solve SF, who is proud of his innovation and its impact. However, he shot down a popular theory in Noe Valley that his app is, in effect, a troll enabler.
According to McCabe's own analysis, a small portion of 311 complaints in Noe Valley last month used Solve SF, and the app wasn't responsible for the 'doctored' 311 reports that keep recycling old photos.
McCabe is familiar with those reports, and has his own idea of who generates them: someone who snaps photos of illegally parked cars in driveways, stores them in a cellphone and keeps a text overlay for each one with the violator's address and license plate number. In all likelihood, McCabe said, the mystery snitch uses these stored photos to refile the same complaints, predicting that people will continue parking in driveways in which their cars don't fit.
'I see this (type of report) daily,' McCabe said. 'And they should use my app. It would be easier.'
Meanwhile officials at the SFMTA said they will continue responding to complaints about illegal parking, and issue tickets when warranted.
Last April, the SFMTA began a ' focused parking enforcement plan ' to enhance safety on sidewalks, targeting each of the city's 11 supervisor districts on a rotating basis. Officials said they would prioritize specific violations, including parking on the sidewalk.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman has fielded several emails from constituents in Noe Valley and the Castro who feel they've been unfairly cited 'for something they've been doing forever.'
He can sense their agony, while also viewing the citations as artifacts of good governance.
'To the defense of the SFMTA, it's not like this law doesn't make any sense,' Mandelman said, explaining that public sidewalks should not be overtaken by private parking. Furthermore, he said, it's only fair that parking control officers treat everyone equally. They can't make exceptions for people who feel they're only obstructing a small portion of the sidewalk. And if they respond to one complaint, it behooves them to ticket everyone on the block who is committing the same infraction.
'It's really hard to ask these officers to be platonic guardians, and decide whether they should enforce in each individual case,' Mandelman said. 'They're not really supposed to be exercising discretion.'
Cristina Rubke, a former SFMTA board director who uses a wheelchair, adopted a similarly diplomatic perspective. She expressed empathy for drivers struggling to cram their vehicles in snug spaces of San Francisco, including their own driveways. But, on balance, she's happy that the agency is enforcing the law.
'Honestly, most people are good actors,' Rubke said, 'they're not trying to force a person in a wheelchair out into the street. And yet as a general matter, these citations exist as a reminder that (other) people need to use that space.'
Rubke remembers many instances when she has had to cross a street to avoid a car jutting onto the sidewalk. A couple of times she has tried to maneuver around the overhang, only to hit a crack in the pavement, and then backtrack.
Reed said he's happy to rush out and move his car for any passerby, though he would prefer they call or ring his doorbell, rather than filing a complaint. To encourage civility, he posted a sign at his front steps.
'If you ever have a concern about our vehicle, please reach out,' the sign says, providing his phone number. 'We're happy to move it.'
Since posting the sign, Reed said he hasn't received any more warnings. Which hasn't exactly solved the problem: His BMW still doesn't quite fit in the driveway.