SAN DIEGO — Since California’s new daylighting law went into effect on January 1, the Parking Enforcement team of the San Diego Police Department has given out 4,200 tickets to cars that were not following the rules.
It is against the law for drivers to park their cars on the side of the street that faces a crossing inside 20 feet of it.
Erin Longen, who is in charge of parking enforcement for the SDPD, said, “It’s all about pedestrian safety.” “As you get close to a crosswalk, picture a kid walking to school. You won’t be able to see them if a car is parked close by.”
The first two months, the SDPD’s Parking Enforcement team taught people about the rules and gave out warnings.
Longen said, “We gave out 1,500 warnings for two months. It was a little blue slip that we would leave on cars we saw breaking the law.” This helped get the word out before March 1, when the tickets and fines kicked in.
Longen said, “We’ve written over 4,200 tickets, which sounds like a lot, but it’s less than 10% of the tickets we write as an agency. And we write them both proactively and reactively—so people do use the Get It Done App to report violations in their neighbourhood, and we respond to those as well as just seeing what we see in the community.”
She said that the parking control team has the most problems in places where it’s already hard to find a spot.
In particular, La Jolla, Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, North Park, Hillcrest, Normal Heights, and North Park.
No matter if the crossing is marked with white lines on the street or not, the law still applies. It doesn’t matter if the curb is painted red or not all the way along its 20-foot length.
“Remember that some red zones were painted before this law, so some of them might only be 5 feet,” she said. “But we have to give that 20-foot space.”
The state requires that people who break the new rule pay a $117 fine.