parking furor at CCC 10K

They gave tickets last year, but the race organizers managed to get all the tickets waived. This year there was notification given in the local news paper. I am not sure if there were signs or not. I did see all the cars parked there and figured these people followed everyone else and did not bother to look, or maybe they parked anyway and thought strength in numbers. I knew better and parked on the other side of the park near Esplanade. Also, I would have avoided that cluster of traffic regardless of potential ticket.

Too bad for those who got tickets. Hope you had a good race.

Do they still have the corrupt mayor they had during Katrina?

Newspapers?

Just a thought, but it seems like no parking signs would be more effective.

At least that's what most other cities do.

It is amazing how short sighted municipalities are when it comes to supporting running events. Why not provide some free parking and support a very large event that brings in lots of dollars for hotels and restaurants?

Although I think the practice is lame and unevenly distributed among neutral ground "parking lots" in the city, the facts are: 1) this fiasco happened in November at our Turkey Day race - there were signs posting no parking; 2) there were signs posting "no parking" on Saturday; 3) the city issued a release warning of parking problems, although I'm not sure who reads city releases or even where to go to find them; 4) the race organized some shuttles off-site and a parking situation at a local community college; and 5) the race issued a declaration regarding the parking issues.

I think that's a fair representation of what went on. It's a tough situation. Pretty much everyone could have done "a little better," including those who were ticketed.

Not sure what you mean by "a little better" (concerning what we as the people who received tickets could have done) when there are police cars blocking entry to the park where people COULD park and not be inside the race route but no one directing traffic to where you can park. I have been stopped many times by an officer who told me if I stayed parked where I was I would be ticketed. So this "NOPD does not tell people where not to park" business is total BS and a total setup. What they fail to understand is that they are there to SERVE and PROTECT people. They failed to provide any service at all!

And I am not sure where you saw these signs but there were NO SIGNS indicating not to park in the neutral zone in any line of sight for me and the other hundreds of people who got tickets when I got there at 6:30am.

How are people from out of town supposed to know anything about a parking fiasco that happened last year or at the last event? It doesn't matter if they run an article in the local paper, that may help about 5% of the race entrants.

I really think the organizers should have done more to prevent what happened. They could have worked out something to provide $2 parking in the "neutral zones" and donated that to the city. They could have put something on the front page of the CCC website about where you can and cannot park. They could have put notes in the goodie bag about the parking situation. But they didn't do anything, so I hope they're prepared to throw out another couple of hundreds of tickets.

What is a "neutral zone"? I have never heard that term related to streets/parking.

This is a city that really does not care about running. I ran their marathon. Traffic control was a joke. You are on your own for large portions.

From what I heard, the parking lot at Delgado parking lot was closed off to public parking. The CCC's quality has really gone down since it switch to the city park route. The audubon route was much better

Yep, when you are still out there after the race time limit expires you are officially on your own. Maybe you shold try to run faster.

Me2 wrote:

This is a city that really does not care about running. I ran their marathon. Traffic control was a joke. You are on your own for large portions.

It is not just running. A suburb of Columbus ticketed 65 cars of people that were attending an auction. After doing this, the officer went to the auction and announced he was on lunch break and if the other people didn't want a ticket, they had a half hour to move their car.

I am seriously shocked that you would expect anything less than the "great" City of New Orleans.