Tag Archives: parking

Fast & Furious: Swedish Drift


It took a moment of contemplation before diving into this little snow drift.

One week after a major snowstorm and 15-20% of the street parking in Hoboken remains under sooty iceburgs. Plowing was haphazard and there’s huge drifts next to driveways and pedestrian crossings. It makes it next to impossible to see around intersections at stop signs.

I witnessed a hit and run on Thursday. The driver of a big, red dump truck was so pissed at the slow traffic flow along Washington St. that he backed his truck into a passenger van parked in front of the local Elks lodge. The rear of the van was sticking out a bit into the lane and a Miller Lite truck was double parked across the street. This caused a pinch-point that slowed down traffic for 4-5 blocks. The guy in the dump truck kept blaring his horn, to no avail. When he finally squeezed through he stopped, hit reverse, and slowly backed into the senior-center van that was partially blocking the lane. He pushed it enough to move it, and luckily there was no one inside. He then took off, only to get stuck in the next traffic tie up. Cops drove to the scene about 10 minutes later, but I was already on a slow moving bus to downtown.

Below is a spot I managed to parallel park into in front of my place. I’d just driven 2.5 hours and was determined to fit, so I just plowed back and hoped not to clog the tail pipe with an icicle.

Snowed In and Dug Out

snowkids

The Great Thunder Snow Storm of Dec 2010 has covered our street with at least a foot of snow. As of Monday night our street hasn’t been plowed, 18 hours after the snow stopped. This has resulted in a 1/2 dozen idiots in CUVs thinking they can use our block as a cross-street, only to find their compact-car-based, tall,  AWD with fat street tires ain’t gonna make it through the mush. A guy in a BMW X3 caused a minor traffic jam when he got stuck with 3 cars behind him. 15 minutes of spinning and pushing and he finally started moving. 10 yards later and he was stuck again, requiring another 15 minutes of spinning and pushing. The cars behind couldn’t go backward so they sat there. A food delivery guy in an old Nissan gave up on his delivery and was chowing down on some lo mein. Once the beemer got out the Nissan was able to skate across the snow, benefiting from low weight and skinny tires.

I don’t need to drive anywhere til Wednesday but figured I’d shovel out so things don’t freeze. Above my daughters stand on a snow-drift next to my car. I had shoveled a bit the night before but there was plenty more overnight. Below is a couple hours later, with salt under the tires, a snow-berm to protect against fishtailers, and a tunnel near the front of the car so the kids can crawl through to the sidewalk.

snow-shoveled

Paying for Public Street Parking

blackbrick-xmastree-rear

The NY Times documents efforts by some city dwellers to share information about curb-side parking spots. StreetParkNYC has an iPhone app website that allows you to announce when you’re leaving a spot. Another driver who’s in need of a spot can get info about the location for $5 and you would get a $3 kick back, with StreetParkNYC pocketing the remaining $2.

This sounds so creepy. Street parking in Hoboken, where I live, is pretty tough. It’s rare that you see an open parking space. Most of the time you have to catch someone getting in their car so you can nab the spot. I’m wondering how people would react if someone beats them to a spot they just paid $5 for. StreetPark claims their system would reduce fuel consumption and emissions, but it seems to me that it would just defer these problems to someone else.

Update: Caleb from StreetParkNYC responds in comments.