Double Trouble for Trucks

Most days, Ralph Sapp feels like a frustrated roadside casualty of this bustling city’s downtown delivery wars.

The veteran United Parcel Service driver makes 45 harried stops a day along his winding route through North Beach, Chinatown and the Financial District--moving up and down often impossibly hilly streets clogged with buses, scrambling tourists, aggressive cab drivers and clanging cable cars.

And amid all the madness, there’s usually not a single legal parking place in sight. So Sapp goes into survival mode: He flips on his emergency flashers and double-parks his lumbering truck, ignoring the blaring horns and looks-to-kill glares of passing motorists.

“Being a delivery man here is a total nightmare,” says the 40-year-old Sapp. “Cars hog the trucks-only zone and then the cops slap us with double-parking tickets. It gives you high blood pressure. It makes you old before your time.”

If Mayor Willie Brown gets his way, it could get even worse for double-parking scofflaws like Sapp.

As part of his “Unclog the Streets” campaign in the city with the nation’s second-highest traffic density, Brown wants to more severely punish double-parked drivers who block downtown streets. Instead of a mere parking ticket, the mayor wants to cite the worst offenders with moving violations that will count against their driving record.

Officials say trucking firms consider parking citations the price of doing business in congested San Francisco and often write a monthly check to cover tickets. While critics call the proposal draconian, Brown insists it would require drivers to take responsibility for their actions.

“The truck culture in this town doesn’t even look for a legal zone to park on--they just leave it on the street,” said Brown. “We’re doing what we should have been doing a long time ago--not being brutal but making sure that everyone parks appropriately.”

Under the plan--to be considered this month by the Board of Supervisors--a new parking control task force would exclusively patrol for double-parkers. Police would also continue to ticket motorists for impeding traffic flow.

The law would make San Francisco the only city outside New York where parking control officers--often derisively known as meter maids--can issue moving violations, officials say. Chicago is also considering such a move.

Gauging the negative fallout, officials will train the new task force in dealing with hostile motorists. Only uncooperative truck drivers and others who refuse to move their vehicles will be hit with moving violations, officials say.

“People think that just because they put on their hazard lights and drop their tailgate, everything is OK,” said Fred Hamdun, director of parking and traffic. “But this kind of selfishness only adds to the road rage, unnecessary delays and inconvenience [that] people experience when they drive around this city.”

City officials admit that San Francisco is no Disneyland for delivery truck drivers or anyone else forced to negotiate its obstacle course of disjointed streets crisscrossing a compact downtown area.

“The problem is we’ve got too many cars in this city,” said Dianna Hammons, a staff aide to Hamdun.

Officials say there are 454,000 registered vehicles in San Francisco, which are joined by an average 30,000 commuter vehicles each day. The city has just over a half-million parking spaces.

But only 320,000 of those are along the most-used downtown streets, where many resort to blocking sidewalks and fire hydrants--forcing officials to write more than 35,000 double-parking tickets each year.

Said Hammons: “Every day, it’s like losing a game of musical chairs--there are always more cars than there are parking spaces.”

Brown’s get-tough stance on double-parkers is just one facet of a stepped-up campaign to ease stress on the streets of San Francisco.

The city has hired 50 new parking control officers and has cracked down on those who park in spaces reserved for delivery trucks. Such fines have been doubled to $100, and many cars are now towed.

Officials want to fine downtown businesses that block their loading docks with debris to make more room for delivery trucks. Brown also wants to limit many larger trucks to overnight deliveries.

While many hotels and restaurants have balked at the proposed daytime delivery ban, Brown’s battle against double-parking has raised the most hackles, particularly among local truckers unions.

Union officials say the blame lies not with the truck drivers but with people who park in the yellow-marked truck delivery spaces--leaving truckers with no alternative but to block traffic.

“If I’m driving a truck and I can’t find legal parking, what do I do, keep going? Do I just blow off the delivery?” asked Robert Morales, secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters Joint Council 7, one of 10 Bay Area truckers unions.

“They should tow away these selfish cars that park in the yellow and leave the truckers alone. These are honest American workmen, just trying to make a living.”

Morales says citing truckers with moving violations could grind city commerce to a halt. “Traffic is part of life in San Francisco,” he said. “But the bureaucrats are making villains out of the wrong people.”

Officials say double-parkers block electric buses and trolleys that cannot move around them.

Asked Maggie Lynch, a spokeswoman for the city’s Municipal Railway: “Who should have right of way, a bus with 45 people on board or a truck with one person?”

Brown says the city in the past has been successful in discouraging motorists from parking in bus zones by raising the fine to $250 and aggressively towing cars.

“Bus zones used to be a favorite place to park, but now they’re not,” Brown said. “We can do the same thing to change the conduct with double-parking. It’s a trial-and-error method.”

Officials say the new law would be aimed at not only truck drivers, but any motorist who blocks traffic. “Driving habits in this city have become so sloppy, many people think it’s reasonable to double-park if they’re just running in to pick up dry cleaning or coffee or their child from school,” said P.J. Johnston, a spokesman for Mayor Brown.

But some supervisors say passage of the new law is no sure bet.

“Are we going to add double-parked mayoral limousines to the list?” asked Supervisor Aaron Peskin. “Every time the mayor gets caught in a traffic jam and experiences the life the rest of San Francisco endures, he comes up with a new unclog-the-streets campaign.”

While skeptical of the plan, Peskin said that, “as with all of the mayor’s ideas, before I write their obituary, I need to give them a careful look.”

Delivery driver Ralph Sapp is also critical: “It’s another one of silly Willie’s farfetched ideas.”

There are so few parking spots, Sapp must double-park on 80% of his stops. Moving violations will force him out of work, he says.

“If the enforcement people try to ruin my license for the way I park, they can keep the truck. They need my license to give me a ticket, and they’re not gonna get me.

“I’ll abandon the truck--let them tow it. Two can play the mayor’s game.”