A New Year’s Plea for Parking Justice

By Kate Callen

2025 begins the enforcement of California’s “Daylighting Law” that reduces parking near street corners. The new rule will improve public safety. It also will shrink the availability of curbside space.

The City of San Diego could use this as an opening to help neighborhoods with severe parking shortages. Stronger enforcement of existing rules would ease the pressure on jammed communities. Citations of obvious infractions would generate revenue and send a message that resonates.

The “Daylighting” measure aims to improve visibility at intersections by prohibiting parking “within 20 feet of the vehicle approach of any marked or unmarked crosswalk, even if a red curb is not present.”

The wording leaves room for interpretation. “Unmarked crosswalk” seems to cover intersections where people might cross the street. That would include every intersection. The absence of a red curb to indicate where you can’t park means, in essence, you’re on your own.

In too many San Diego neighborhoods, housing density had increased the demand for parking, and bike lanes have reduced the supply. Cramming cars into even less space will ratchet up the daily stress.

And let’s finally ditch the “alternative transportation” theory. That dog never hunted. People drive because they have no viable choice. Buses and bike lanes haven’t lured masses of motorists out of their cars, and here in San Diego, they never will.

So here’s a plea to City officials: Have a heart, and grow a spine.

You can make life easier for the people whose taxes pay your salaries if you would enforce parking laws already on the books.

Start with the Neighborhood Parking Protection Ordinance posted on your own “Neighborhood Parking Rules” webpage. It “restricts overnight parking of oversized vehicles, non-motorized vehicles, and recreational vehicles” including boats on trailers.

Every community in San Diego in every socioeconomic stratus struggles with parking injustice. The few people who brazenly grab up curb space with illegal vehicles are telling their neighbors: I’m taking more than my fair share. If you notify the authorities, you’ll piss me off. Deal with it.

My sister has been dealing with it for years. She lives on a narrow North Park street with small homes and few driveways. Her next-door neighbor parks his motorboat and trailer in front of his house 24/7.

I’ve begged her to report him. But she wants to keep the peace. She gave me her blessing to write this post, but I agreed not to name her or her street or show a picture of her neighbor’s boat.

And so, on a drive around North Park, I took pictures of other illegally parked vehicles: the camper, the city construction vehicle, and the private utility truck.

The last two must obey a rule that “parking heavy-duty commercial vehicles in residential areas is prohibited unless the vehicle is loading or unloading goods or has a service call in the immediate vicinity.”

That rule is never enforced. Construction crews, be they municipal, city contractor, or private builder, routinely leave their heavy equipment parked for long stretches. It’s too much of a hassle to obey the law by moving your vehicles when you leave the jobsite.

The City faces a lot of work to put teeth in the “Daylight Law.” Enforcing the ban on residential parking of RVs and commercial vehicles is simpler. Such stepped-up enforcement is justified in the face of shrinking curb space. And there’s that extra revenue.

Illegally parked behemoths are low-hanging citation fruit – easy to spot, impossible to excuse or defend. Enforcement officers can cruise around city neighborhoods, like I did. The tickets will write themselves.

If my sister saw a traffic officer put a citation on her neighbor’s boat, she might begin to regain trust in her city government. And maybe, just maybe, she’d decide that a future sales tax hike would deserve her vote.

Click to access parkingrulesfactsheet.pdf

https://www.sandiego.gov/parking/enforcement