Additionally, as others have said, parking was FREE at metro station garages around the area through Tuesday. And many area garages were also offering free or $1 parking. There is absolutely no excuse for being parked on the snow emergency routes.
I would also assume that the free or $1 garage parking was full just a couple hours after the announcement.
You don't get to set up problems for yourself, then complain when those self-created problems have consequences.
I don't understand why so many are eager to defend these people. If you can't move your car quickly, don't park it in a place where you might need to move it quickly. If you negligently leave your car on a major road during a blizzard, don't be shocked to find that your car has been dug out courtesy of city parking enforcement.
http://dcist.com/2016/01/mayor_bowser_is_voiding_tickets_iss...
During snow emergencies, cities should work with parking garages to make overnight parking for cars, free. It'll solve a lot of problems.
If cars are not removed past the emergency, ticket revenue can be shared with the garage
DC did in this case. The city warned about the emergency routes ahead of time, offered free parking at metro stations, and worked with private garages to offer $1/day parking.
Many local garages were either free or $1/day for the storm. There was no excuse to leave cars parked on these routes.
I guess I missed the free or $1 a day parking info since I was working from home.
It certainly feels unfair to all those people (including me) who took enough pains to ensure they planned their days in a way that the cars weren't on the Snow Emergency Routes.
The advisory said they issued 2,091 parking tickets in the
first three hours of the mayor’s declaration.
The tickets drew backlash from drivers who said they were
unable to dig out their cars. Others said they did not feel
comfortable driving in the snow, some because their cars
were not properly equipped for it.
See here for anecdotal reports regarding the city's absurd winter road strategy:
https://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/41xgqe/lmfao/
And furthermore, thousands of tickets will be forgiven:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-to-forgi...
Which sounds glib, but it takes a lot of equipment to be able to rapidly deal with snow on a lot of roads, equipment that would be sitting around rusting a lot of the time.
In other breaking news, water confirmed to be still wet.
Also, looks like the mayor is voiding all the tickets from the 22nd: http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Mayor-Bowser-Voids-A...
That sentence there carries the word "before", which suggests that when the mayor made the declaration, the blizzard had not yet snowed in any cars.
Additionally, based on my understanding, a lot of local parking lots/garages drastically dropped their rates to help accommodate.
If the law is amended, it should be amended to read "It is illegal to park on a snow emergency route at time time during and 24hours before a snow emergency. A snow emergency exists when the city declares it." Then the city could announce the emergency before the snow started, and start warning people, and then start ticketing people, and ideally by the time the snow hit there would be few if any cars in the emergency snow lanes.
Your car is probably the first or second most expensive thing you own. Take ten seconds to read the signs governing the legalities of where you store it. If you screw they up (it happens to all of us) then own the screwup.
I can go on a one week trip which will turn into a three week one. It's just the nature of the job - the customer's needs come first. They're running billion dollar manufacturing facilities and all the equipment has to keep running.
The needs of some city residents to travel for weeks or months without thinking about where they are parked don't outweigh the needs of a snowy city to have emergency snow travel routes.
If you wanted to park some place and hope that it doesn't snow, that's both your loss and gain.
Not in places like NYC w/ street sweeping schedules.