Parking Wars

Parking lots ended up at the top of the list for most missed things from Illinois (besides family of course). There are none in the city. You parallel park no matter where you go. Keep in mind we drive a large old van. I am sorry now that I never got a video of Kevin parking it. He is an expert parallel parker now! Forget the cars that automatically park or the rear camera. He can swing the van into a tight spot with out any effort and with no fender benders.

Parking in the city has an extra challenge in that you have to avoid the street cleaner. Every street gets cleaned at least twice a week and the main streets every day. Signs are posted and we quickly realized that each side of the street has different rules.
The traffic cop comes down the street first and tickets all the cars than the street cleaner comes behind him.

The parking in front of Abby's school is reserved for staff from 8-4 Monday thru Friday. The area for deliveries at the college, on our street, was closed Monday thru Saturday from 8-6.

The second challenge is figuring out exactly what the traffic rules are since they are not posted. Our street alone had three fire hydrants and we received 3 tickets before Kevin called the city to get a clear definition of the rule about parking near a hydrant. As we were about to leave the city the local news did a story about the hydrants and a proposed bill requiring the no parking zone near hydrants be clearly marked. The city is making to much money off of this one to ever pass a law like that. The reporter was posing the question, "Should drivers carry a tape measure in their cars so they can determine where to park?" The law is 15 feet on either side of the hydrant is no parking.

Our friendly neighborhood traffic cop ticketing an unsuspecting driver.

The pile of tickets we received in our four months in the city, coming to a grand total of six hundred dollars!!! 3 for street cleaning at $45 each, 3 for fire hydrant at $115 each, and 2 for parking by the school before 4 pm at $60 each