Pop quiz: In the city of Minneapolis, how far from a driveway should your bumper be when you park on the street? Four feet, two feet, five feet, one inch, 10 feet? 

I asked this question to 10 residents walking around the St. Anthony Main neighborhood. If they are indicative of most, then few of you reading this will know the answer. This article addresses that information gap by filling you in on some common unknown laws in the city. Then, part two makes a case for what should be done on account of it.

Part 1: Just the facts 

It can be hard to know all the rules on parking. There are 26 statutes alone on where not to do so in Minneapolis. Here’s a quick heads-up on a few commonly broken ones (and commonly-ticketed ones) due to people’s lack of familiarity with them.

No. 1: 478.90(b) You must park at least five feet from a driveway or alley.

No. 2: 478.90(g) You must park 30 feet away from any school sign along the side of the road.

No. 3: 478.160 It is illegal to leave your keys in the car unattended.

Let’s dig into these a little bit.

I compiled data given to me by the city, and I asked hearing officers — the folks you see to contest a ticket — about which laws were commonly contested and the excuses given by the offenders.

No. 1: In 2011, Minneapolis officers wrote 12,692 tickets because folks parked too close to a driveway or alley. That’s a lot of people who were in a hurry, took a chance, or perhaps didn’t know.

But you do now. So maybe we can lower the 35 per day the city handed out in 2011 at $32 a pop.

Here are some commonly given driver complaints as reported by our hearing officers, none of which are valid excuses:

1. There are no signs or yellow markings.
2. The vehicle is not in the way of entry or blocking the driveway.
3. It is the offender’s driveway and it should not matter if they park in front of their own driveway.

The worst part of breaking this rule, particularly if you don’t know it even exists, is that not only do you get a ticket, but you have only so much time to move your car before it’s towed. Suddenly, you’re running around for half a day and looking at almost $300 in fees. Ouch! 

No. 2: Most people know not to park within 30 feet of the stop sign — probably because it’s a state law taught to us in driver’s ed, and also because it’s often stated on the signs themselves. But in Minneapolis it’s also illegal to park within 30 feet of any school sign along the side of the road.

Well, whether because of ignorance or ignoring this or the stop-sign rule, Minneapolis cars were ticketed a whopping 6,114 times in 2011 at a penalty of 32 big ones. 

Common complaints: 

1. There are no signs or yellow markings.
2. Did not know the rule.

No. 3: Leaving your keys in your car is one of those acts that hardly needs to be legislated, but there are a few key months when people do this regularly: December, January, and February. When it’s cold, people like to warm up their car. In 2011, 261 tickets were issued at $42/per.

A caveat to this law: If you have a remote starter it is OK  for your car to run unattended. I found this out when I started my car from inside a restaurant and watched from the window as a squad car pulled up behind it and sat there. Soon I left the restaurant and as I approached my car, the cop spoke to me through his speaker to come over to his car. I walked up to his window (kind of a neat role-reversal) and he asked if I had auto-start in the car. I said I did, and he said that I was fine, then, but that it was illegal if I started it with the keys inside.

I walked away thinking, “I had no idea that was a law.” And recalled the dozens of times I was an accidental law-breaker a couple winters prior when I’d start my car on a bitter winter morning with one set of keys, lock it with the other set, and go inside to let the car thaw. (And then the cynic in me also thought about the hundreds of times I’d seen cop cars idling all by their lonesome.)  

Part 2: Just my opinion

It damages city/citizen relations when people get ticketed for laws they never had the reasonable chance to know existed.

It’s also easier than ever for a city to communicate with residents what the laws are: website, text messages. With technology, this seems like an easy problem to fix, or at least try to fix.

The problem is money — no, not money spent informing the people, money from tickets, which are revenue for the city. As long as the city gains financially from our law-breaking, they’ll always rely on, and thus hope for us, to do so. This is a dangerous reliance as the incentive of financial gain will interfere with an institution that should be focused purely on helping the city run safely and smoothly. Plus, citizens are also left wondering each time they get a ticket whether they got it because the city was short on cash.

The solution is to remove fines and tickets from general budget use.

Parking too close to a driveway is only ever a problem if it, well, causes a problem — someone was blocked in or their view was obstructed as they pull out. Why not ticket responsively, then? — only when there’s a complaint called in. The problem with this is that if I’m in an emergency and need to get out of my driveway and there’s a car blocking it, it’s already too late to help. So I understand proactive law enforcement.

We should have a proactive force, but it should be without the motivation to raise money, taking out their tape measure — which they do — to get anyone within 5 feet. (A friend of mine got a ticket once for parking 4 feet 5 inches away from the driveway as indicated on her ticket.)

Also, as law enforcement doubles as a vehicle for funding, fines rise. In 2010, those $32 dollar tickets mentioned above were $24. For those of you who sympathize — or are included — in the population of those just squeaking by, how fair are these increases? How big of a hit is a $260 tow?

On April 4 I went to see a hearing officer about a parking ticket I got. Impossible as it is for me to be unbiased about the scenario, I can say with all honesty that on the day of my ticket I parked a distance from a driveway that appeared safe and reasonable. I was even conscious of the law because I was researching this piece and got out to look and see that I was OK. I didn’t have my tape measure with me, but perhaps I should have. I got back to my car later to find that little present waiting under the wiper blade. I opened up the red-striped envelope to read that I had parked 3 feet 11 inches from the driveway. Worse still was that my car was slated to be towed. Had I not returned when I did, I could have been the one wasting half my day and suffering a significant blow to my finances.

At the hearing office, as I waited for my name to be called, I looked around the waiting room and saw a sea of faces representing those who need to fight these tickets the hardest. Some are there because of irresponsibility; some are there because they don’t know the laws; some may have been ticketed improperly (a probable side-effect of relying on tickets for the budget). All were there because they can’t afford to pay the fine.

My name was called, and the hearing officer handled my case generously. (The hearing officers are often very helpful, by the way.) Just as I was about to leave his office, he mentioned that the five-foot rule actually starts at the end of the curb curve. Thus, my understanding of the law — even after having read it word for word — was wrong. It only says in the statute: “You must park at least five feet from a driveway or alley.” But where does a driveway officially end? — apparently at the end of its flare out to meet the street:

I got up to leave the office as the next ticket-contester walked in. I walked down the hall, stopped, and turned back to make certain of what he told me. I stuck my head back in his office and asked the hearing officer to reiterate his claim about the law. He did, the idea being that a fire truck can be able to get into a driveway and clear the corner, he said.

Five feet from the end of the curb flare. I’m willing to bet, right now, that just about every car in Minneapolis parked adjacent to a driveway or alley is doing so illegally.

A city, any city, would be better off not letting financial gain muddy up the waters of keeping our streets safe, keeping strong city/citizen relations, and removing a system that disproportionally hurts poorer folks. This whole system of ticketing is very normal, however, and the acceptance of this practice grows stronger during economic periods where the city needs funding sources where it can get them. I say, however, that it is during financial difficulty that the need to remove tickets as a city funding source increases, as there’s increased incentive to abuse the funding source.

So tell your councilperson to cut that cord of cash.

But if we can’t clean this monetary moral hazard from our city, then at least you now know the laws mentioned above. I hope this article gets in front of many people’s eyes so there are fewer folks ticketed for being four feet from a driveway.

Safe parking.

Brandon Ferdig is writer from Minneapolis, who writes a blog, New Plateaus. He is currently writing a book titled, "New Plateaus in China," a compilation of human-interest stories, participation, and social commentary from the perspective of being in China.

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