We live in Chicago in the summer and Florida in the winter. Twice a year I drive a short-bed pick-up truck (a Ford Sport Trac, if it matters) to Chicago to carry stuff back and forth, and then drive it back to FL. I typically have it in Chicago for a week or so. There is a street across from our building that does not require permit parking, and so I leave it there.
Today, I found a ticket on the windshield. There is minimal information explaining the infraction, but by poking around the City Clerk’s web site I find that it is against city ordinance to park a pick-up truck on residential streets for “longer than necessary.” Exceptions can be made if the truck has a city vehicle sticker (which is more expensive for a pick-up than for a passenger car) and if you get a special exemption sticker from your alderman.
I guess thais maybe wouldn’t bother me so much but for the fact that I can apparently park an Escalade (which is significantly bigger than my truck) with impunity.
So, until I leave on Sunday, I either need to find someplace indoors to park my truck (which will be costly) or take the chance of getting more tickets (which, if I get one per day, will roughly equal the cost of parking in a garage until then).
I momentarily considered contesting the ticket, since the ticket lists the wrong address for the parking location, and it lists my plate wrong (says it’s an IL plate and not the FL plate that it is), but that seems like a losing proposition.
My sister got a warning a few weeks ago for making a U-Turn on a highway.
Before anyone says anything, I’m not talking about a freeway, just a regular surface road, full of houses and driveways and sidewalks and intersections that just so happens to be labelled “HWY-32”. That didn’t seem right, but I pulled up that statute and sure enough, you can’t make a U-Turn on a highway.
I’ve been making a U-turn in front of my parents house since they moved in there 17 years ago.
For the record, there are absolutely no “No U Turn” sings anywhere on this road that I know of. IIRC, she was actually pulled over for some other minor infraction (she had also made this u-turn) and this is what the warning was for. Like running a stop sign and getting a seat belt ticket, I think the officer didn’t want to let her go with nothing.
I can’t imagine many people know that it’s illegal (in Wisconsin) to make a U-Turn on a highway.
FTR, I don’t have the statute handy, but IIRC it was that you can’t make a U-Turn on an undivided highway ‘in the middle of the road’ but that it’s okay to do it at an intersection or other place where you would typically be turning.
OTOH, what if the sign actually means “No, You turn”?
I have no idea what the rationale is and I know a few people who use a pickup as their personal vehicle and got plenty pissed off when they were ticketed.
No - it’s registered in Florida, which doesn’t issue commercial or truck plates for pick-up trucks which are used as a passenger car.
Which actually makes me think I may just ignore the ticket. The ticket says it’s a Ford with an Illinois plate number (which also happens to be the same plate number as my IL passenger car - vanity plate). It would be easy for me to prove that my IL plate is registered to a Volvo car, not a Ford pick-up, should they pursue me for the ticket.
I ask because the Lake Shore Drive restriction was apparently for pickups with truck plates. The question on that site was “I have a small pickup with truck license plates. Can I drive it on Lake Shore Drive?” I’m skeptical that you really can’t park a pickup truck with car plates on the streets of Chicago.
You probably shouldn’t just ignore the ticket, but should probably fight it. However, I’m no lawyer or anything.
If the truck has FL plates, I’m thinking you can pretty much ignore any tickets you get here. A neighbor keep his pickup registered in TX and ignores parking tickets here with seeming impunity, as does someone on my street whose Jag has had Wisconsin plates for a decade.
At how many tickets do they start booting? I’m leaving first thing Sunday morning, so I figure at most I might accumulate 4 more tickets. I took this one off the windshield, so it’s not like it’ll be sitting there piling up tickets. I suppose if it’s the same Dept. of Revenue employee every day, they might get annoyed and call for a boot, but at what point is that likely to happen?
There are a lot of odd laws that straddle the personal/commercial world of the pickup. My sister bought and drove her Nissan with a camper shell for two years. One day, she took the shell off and was hauling some large stuff when she got a ticket for not having commercial license plates. Apparently, if the shell is permanent, you can register the vehicle as a passenger car, but if the bed is exposed, it’s commercial. (This was in CA about ten years ago.)
Not surprised there are parking regs, even today. Pickups were once five percent of the market and only became something closer to 50% (peak, in the 1980s-90s; may have dropped a little now) for a fluke combination of reasons. Plus marketing. A lot of laws and regs assume they are commercial vehicles, even if they’re a tricked-out lowboy.
If it’s been in the same spot this whole time, move it to another spot. I have a feeling this ordinance only exists to prevent people from racking up pickup trucks and leaving them sitting around, hillbilly-style. More of an appearance thing than a functional thing.
It’s not just LSD. Pickups and other B-or-greater-plate trucks are also prohibited from driving on Chicago boulevards.
You can find your vehicle booted with two or more parkers.
I wish I can remember where I heard it but if you have a pickup or other truck and manage to get the regular passenger plates for it, you are still subject to parking or boulevard/Drive ticketing. The rationale is that the State’s error or misclassification should not prevent enforcement of City ordinances.
No cite but I’m told that if you have a camper shell, you need Illinois RV plates and still can’t park on the street.
I’m personally all for the ban on overnight street parking for commercial vehicles. You KNOW people would be running dump truck dispatch/cement mixer depots/taxi offices/landscaping yards/truck stops out of their homes if they had a chance. The boulevard driving ban is a lot harder to justify, though, and just seems like a money grab from those who don’t know better.
I don’t think they boot willy-nilly. It’s after two tickets, and they notify you, but I don’t think they bother if the vehicle’s not registered in IL. If you check the city’s web-site and don’t see your vehicle in the system, you’re golden.