Rome Police Use Twitter To Battle Illegal Parking 157
cartechboy writes "Illegal parking has always been a major problem in Rome. More than half of Rome's 2.7 million residents use private vehicles, and the ancient city has a staggering ratio of 70 cars per 100 residents. So many residents park, uh, creatively. But now authorities think they've found a way to fight bad parking using social media. Basically, they've asked residents to post photos of bad parking jobs to Twitter. In December, the Italian cops began encouraging smart phone users to snap pics of illegally parked cars and tweet those photos to the department's Twitter account. The new system, which was created by Raffaele Clemente, Rome's chief of traffic police, seems to be working. In the first 30 days, police received more than 1,000 complaints tweeted to their account; (one example is here). Officials were able to respond to around 740 and hand out citations."
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wrong ration (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't find that staggering. What I do find staggering is that the seems to be a ratio of about 70 cars per every parking space. Rome is a place where triple parking is pretty much routine.
Rome has enormous public transportation problems for 2 main reasons :
- one is that its surface public bus fleet is seriously small for a city that in extension is second to London.
- building a subway network is very difficult not for engineering problems but for historical problems. The Law makes it impossible to continue an engineering project should you end up coming into contact with ancient Roman ruins. And digging in Rome is a guarantee that you'll end up upon some ancient Roman ruins. So each time you want to build a garage, a new subway station it is a roll of dice. And when the works stops you can't destroy the ruins to continue the engineering project, you are not allow to move the ruins etc... So it all ends un in a standstill for years or decades to come. This is one aspect where fanatical respect for historical ruins is seriously harming any evolution of Rome as a city. Sometimes you need to let go of ancient things to build for the present. And that's not the case in Italy. The past takes precedence over the present. And so you end up in these absurd situations where Roman ruins end up having more "rights" than modern roman citizens do. With the consequence that living in Rome is hell. I can guarentee that no Roman likes living in Rome. Tourists yeah but they only stay 1-2 weeks. Day to day life in Rome is hell. Think Atlanta snow congested caos every single day of the year. It would drive crazy anybody.
Re:Town planning - lack of. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're not looking hard enough. Most of the major cities I've driven to in the EU (Belgium and the Netherlands, primarily, over five years) had significant parking on the outskirts of town (never free, land costs money) near the end of the city metro lines. Drop the car there, take the tram, and enjoy a city built at a human scale. Or even better, take the train right into downtown.
I've moved back to the US recently, and I dearly miss those compact cities. I'm in a small city in Georgia now and it's disgusting how much prime downtown space is wasted on empty parking lots. I'd much rather have no parking at all rather than too much, as then you can at least walk or bike.
Traffic lights is a different matter, and apparently depends on your driving style. I never had a problem flowing through light after light back home, but here I'm constantly being stopped. I'm sure I'll eventually get used to the timing here, as you would over there.
Re:Town planning - lack of. (Score:4, Interesting)