I noticed a few days ago that the motorcycles and scooters that used to line the street outside my office are no longer there. At first I chalked it up to people not riding as much during the rainy season. Yesterday was bright and sunny, though, and the bikes were still missing.
So I headed over to the local town hall (Tokyo has a different "town hall" for each of its 23 wards) and checked, and yes, it's true: Tokyo's new parking restrictions are being enforced against scooters and motorcycles, not just cars and trucks. Parking on the sidewalk, or on the road, is out. You need to park in designated spaces or lots only.
I asked the town hall bureaucrat where the nearest parking lot for motorcycles was. The closest one is about 2.5 kilometers away from my office, and it can hold maybe 30 bikes. Not only is walking that far out of the question, but the lot is always full with the bikes of people who work in the immediate area anyway. But not to worry: They're building another lot, about the same distance away from my office, in the opposite direction.
Tokyo's new law has made it impractical to use a scooter or motorcycle to get around town. Unless you have a parking space waiting for you at the end of your journey, you will be breaking the law. And there are incredibly few parking spaces for motorcycles and scooters anywhere in Tokyo. (Even if you wanted to park in a car lot, some of the lots won't let you — they claim, bizarrely, that bikes might fall over and damage the cars.) So if you want to hop around town on two wheels, you're pretty much going to be breaking the law when you park. You probably won't get ticketed most of the time, but you're a criminal just the same.
Not only does the law hurt motorcycle and scooter riders, but by encouraging them to cram onto Tokyo's already-overcrowded subways, it makes rush hour worse for everybody. And companies like Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki, and the thousands of people they employ, can't be too happy with a likely drop-off in demand for their products.
It seems quite clear that this new law, as applied to scooters and motorcycles, has no real purpose other than to generate revenues for the city government by penalizing riders. It benefits no one, while severely inconveniencing many thousands of people. And like any sporadically-enforced law criminalizing ordinary, harmless behavior, people will soon start ignoring it. In fact, there are still a good number of bikes and scooters parked on the streets and sidewalks around town, showing that some people have decided to take their chances.
That seems to be what the government is counting on. After all, if everyone followed the law, it wouldn't generate any revenues. But if Tokyo needs money so badly, it should be up front about it and pass a tax increase, instead of turning the city's riders into outlaws.
So I headed over to the local town hall (Tokyo has a different "town hall" for each of its 23 wards) and checked, and yes, it's true: Tokyo's new parking restrictions are being enforced against scooters and motorcycles, not just cars and trucks. Parking on the sidewalk, or on the road, is out. You need to park in designated spaces or lots only.
I asked the town hall bureaucrat where the nearest parking lot for motorcycles was. The closest one is about 2.5 kilometers away from my office, and it can hold maybe 30 bikes. Not only is walking that far out of the question, but the lot is always full with the bikes of people who work in the immediate area anyway. But not to worry: They're building another lot, about the same distance away from my office, in the opposite direction.
Tokyo's new law has made it impractical to use a scooter or motorcycle to get around town. Unless you have a parking space waiting for you at the end of your journey, you will be breaking the law. And there are incredibly few parking spaces for motorcycles and scooters anywhere in Tokyo. (Even if you wanted to park in a car lot, some of the lots won't let you — they claim, bizarrely, that bikes might fall over and damage the cars.) So if you want to hop around town on two wheels, you're pretty much going to be breaking the law when you park. You probably won't get ticketed most of the time, but you're a criminal just the same.
Not only does the law hurt motorcycle and scooter riders, but by encouraging them to cram onto Tokyo's already-overcrowded subways, it makes rush hour worse for everybody. And companies like Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Suzuki, and the thousands of people they employ, can't be too happy with a likely drop-off in demand for their products.
It seems quite clear that this new law, as applied to scooters and motorcycles, has no real purpose other than to generate revenues for the city government by penalizing riders. It benefits no one, while severely inconveniencing many thousands of people. And like any sporadically-enforced law criminalizing ordinary, harmless behavior, people will soon start ignoring it. In fact, there are still a good number of bikes and scooters parked on the streets and sidewalks around town, showing that some people have decided to take their chances.
That seems to be what the government is counting on. After all, if everyone followed the law, it wouldn't generate any revenues. But if Tokyo needs money so badly, it should be up front about it and pass a tax increase, instead of turning the city's riders into outlaws.
My sympathies go out to you, as this will surely make your life more difficult.
Illegal parking is a huge problem in Tokyo, so I was in favor of the new law as long as it was being enforced against people who were legitimately creating a problem. I can even see enforcing the law against bikes that are actually blocking sidewalks and such, but it sounds like they're just busting people for common-sense parking.
This is going to make life a lot more difficult.
I'm struggling at work to find a safe place to park. I haven't found a legal one yet.
I share your concern that this has been implemented way too preciptously and will probably be enforced sporadically and arbitrarily. That is simply how government works. If the streets were privately managed we would probably have more effective parking control, and there would be a phased implementation that would allow investors to develop an adequate supply of parking.
However, if the regulations are consistently enforced, I presume that companies like Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki and Suzuki, as well as property owners, will take action to supply the demand for parking spaces that has now been created. All is not necessarily lost, although plenty of frustration is certainly in store in the meanwhile.
And the fact that the law is arbitrarily enforced is entirely separate from the fact that (as applied to bikes and scooters, not street-blocking cars and trucks) it serves no purpose at all other than to generate penalty fees.
It sounds like bike users are in a similar position as bicycle users - there is simply not enough parking to satisfy demand, so people end up ignoring the rules which are sporadically enforced, and you have to trot out somewhere to pay a fine on your bicycle (which hopefully is there has hasn't been stolen).
What's the fine?
To the extent anyone is bothered by the bikes, it's probably because they don't like the look of a line of bikes parked at the edge of a sidewalk or plaza. But cities are meant to be lived in; they are not pristine architectural models.
But someone I talked to today told me that the private-sector employees, on the job from 9 to 5, can only fine you. The cops can put points on your license, but maybe can't fine you. And in general, the cops tend to ignore parking problems; that's why the city hired the inspectors.
I need to find out for certain if the cops can fine you, and if the inspectors can give you points.
Since motorcycles are motor vehicles, it has always been illegal to park on the side of the road or on sidewalks. There's just always been an unwritten agreement that bikes won't be targeted for parking violations unless they're acutally in someone's way. What has changed is that the parking laws are now being enforced by private sector employees with money to make and quotas to fill instead of cops, so bikes are getting ticketed even when they're not causing a problem.
I'd love to have a huge demostration with thousands of bikes parking in front of the Diet building, but when your demands are "Allow us to keep breaking the law the way we've always done!", it's a little hard to protest. I don't think many politicians are going to go for a new law that explicitly allows bike parking, and "it's OK to park on the sidewalk as long as you're not in the way" is too subjective to make into legal code.
Everything you say is wrong about the situation is dead on, but I don't see any practical way to fix it (except maybe getting the motorcycle manufacturers to bribe the ticketing companies.) I think we're screwed.
Why not? They would get support from the bike makers, certainly. And couldn't this be a case of a few people who care passionately about an issue having a bigger political impact than the majority, which has no such strong opinion about it (as has been the case with motorcycle helmet laws in the US)?
You're right, since there is the potential for big-money backing, we should probably make as big of a fuss as possible and hope for the best.
I think a law explicitly allowing parking on sidewalks is a non-starter because it would be too difficult to distinguish between bikes that are legitimately in the way and bikes that aren't. What might work would be a rewriting of the current changes to restrict the ability to ticket two-wheelers to police, returning to the status quo ante where cops would only ticket you if there's a real problem. Private enforcers are always going to be overzealous if it affects their bottom line.
[This is not the reason I jumped ship from Republicans, but it's one of the chief reasons that I now rail at them. Talking about small government is now simply that - talk. Dems have ironically been more fiscally responsible, even while not being philosphically inclined to shrink government.]
Sounds like the most effective angle for bike riders is to try to leverage the interests of the manufacturers (but do they have any influence over the city government?) and the local bike shops. Are there any Diet members who would be sympathetic?
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