Voices from Catland is the personal site of Kenn Wilson, sometimes known as Kenn Christ, of San Francisco, California.
Sarai flew to Austin a couple weeks ago for SXSW, taking BART to the airport around 10:30am. I’m a nice guy and so I drove her to the BART station so she wouldn’t have to carry her bags the 3/4 mile or so walk from our apartment. I pulled up in front of the entrance to the station, wished her a good trip, and drove away. Elapsed time maybe one minute but probably closer to about 30 seconds. This morning in the mail I got a parking ticket from AC Transit for “Parking/stopping in a bus zone”, and the cop had written in “Driver dropped off a passenger”. The fine? $250. Fucking hell.
I did a little googling and found that AC Transit has a nice little racket going here. This post on the Capricious Commuter blog has a series of comments spanning 18 months from people who have gotten these tickets when dropping people off. It seems they’ve been staking out the bus zones at a number of east bay BART stops and photographing and ticketing anyone who stops at them, no matter how briefly. I’m sure these tickets, at $250 a pop, provide a nice revenue stream for the county. Maybe that’s why the designated passenger loading zone is so far away and difficult to see.
Our local station, MacArthur BART in Oakland, has a one-way travel lane that runs along the front of the station. Most of this is a red curb bus zone, including the area directly in front of the station entrance. Only after going back there today to take some pictures did I realize that there is actually a passenger loading zone, 50 yards (I measured it) down from the entrance and nearly impossible to see when there are buses and vans parked along the curb. They sure don’t call any attention to it, but I guess that would cut into the revenue stream from the tickets. This isn’t technically entrapment, of course, and this arrangement may not even be intentional, but they’re certainly taking advantage of the ignorance of drivers in order to write these outrageous tickets. If keeping the bus zone clear were the primary concern a simple sign directing people to the passenger zone would probably work wonders.
The area to the right of this photo is the station entrance. The passenger zone is 50 yards down at the far left of the image.
This picture was taken from the spot where I stopped. The first sign indicating a passenger zone is way down by that pickup truck, and almost invisible from the station entrance due to all the other signs and lightposts in the way. It’s completely hidden when there’s a bus or van parked along here.
My first thought was to fight it, as it would be easy to demonstrate just how invisible this passenger zone is from the position of a car entering the lane in front of the station. But then I realized that I’d be in an Alameda county courthouse arguing against what’s obviously a big money maker for the county so my chances of getting it thrown out are basically nil. It seems others have tried and failed as well.
I was in front of the BART station for about an hour today taking pictures and saw at least a dozen cars stop briefly in this bus zone to drop off or pick up passengers. I warned a few people who were sitting there waiting about the fines and none of them had any idea that there even is a passenger zone at this station. Luckily for them, AC Transit didn’t seem to have the station staked out this morning.
I guess the rules don’t apply to them though, as demonstrated here by this unattended AC Transit SUV parked in a red zone and blocking one of their own buses.
Comments
Thomas Johnson
October 6, 2008
The same thing happened to me the other day, but while dropping someone off at the Bart station on Broadway. I was on the street running parallel to Broadway Bart station, and stopped just to let my friend out. It was a bit dark, I could not even tell the color of the curb, and was concerned with the safety of my friend and I wanted to drop them off right in front. Regardless I saw nothing wrong with stopping to let them out, there were no cars around except for one cop, apparently waiting for me like a spider and I was the prey. I Put my emergency lights on, dropped them off, left. 15 seconds = a $250 ticket? Not to mention there were no buses or traffic anywhere at this time of day and I was only trying to do the right thing by pulling over instead of letting my passenger out in the middle of the street, even though there was no traffic. This just seems fundamentally unfair, I have no idea where the “passenger loading zone is” but frankly I think they should not ticket you so hard for letting someone out of your car when there is absolutely no traffic around, no buses, its dark, 10 seconds, etc etc. Thanks for your site it is great to know I am not the only one. Too bad almost everyone you would talk to would do the same thing we both did to get the ticket. What a great source of revenue, and not one person who would behave differently than us, an endless supply of people to screw!
Thomas Johnson
October 6, 2008
P.S. When I go to Macarthur Bart I usually pull up and I am aware of the “passenger loading zone”. On Broadway it is a small Bart terminal though, with much less traffic and buses. I primarily pull up always at Macarthur becuase we all know (me and my friends) that “the buses get mad” if they pull up and you are there. Even being aware of these situations, and pulling up at Macarthur, I never knew about the chance of a ticket for dropping someone off. I still got a ticket and I am the most courteous driver to these buses and while I am pulled over dropping off / picking up. Its ridiculous, anyone would have done the same thing as me, I guess we are all guilty for doing something that there is obviously nothing wrong with, but $250, thats robbery! We were just letting someone out, it should be another class of ticket or a warning! With all of the crime in Oakland: rape, murder, robbery, theft, etc. they seem to do NOTHING about! How pathetic is it that these cops harass good citizens like us for this revenue when the city is plagued with real problems they don’t seem to be fixing.
K. Fischer
October 18, 2008
This is f*ed up. I just got one of these bullsh*t tickets in the mail. $250 for stopping on the side of the road. I’m still looking into my options but what a sick display of corruption. I have a high respect for law enforcement and the difficult job they do but this feels like entrapment and theft.
Jeff
December 29, 2008
AC Transit has a similar thing in front of De Anza High School in El Sobrante, which lost its parking and drop-off areas due to construction. Nearly an entire block is a red zone for two adjacent bus stops, which almost never have a bus. Drop off/pick-up for hundreds of students is two car lengths, otherwise walk 2 blocks with a heavy backpack and arms full of books. For awhile the sheriff’s department had an officer out every morning, at the request of AC Transit, filling his quotas with those $250 tickets, given to parents dropping off kids for 30 seconds. After complaints, that’s cooled down, but those huge unused red zones are still there.
Something to say?
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