Rich Connelly reports that jaywalkers aren’t the only target of Mayor White’s “downtown mobility” revenue stream:
The Houston police crackdown on jaywalkers is creating some collateral damage on private enterprise. Specifically, that living laboratory of capitalism that is Astros parking.
Supply and demand doesn’t get demonstrated much more clearly than by the guys with signs waving you into private parking lots near Minute Maid Park. Across the street from the stadium? Twenty bucks. A block away? Fifteen. And so on.
But Houston police have been handing out tickets to those guys with the signs. Todd Clampffer got hit with one recently. “Cops are at that intersection every single game,” he says. “Nobody ever said anything, and then one cop decides to write me a ticket for it.”
HPD spokesman Alvin Wright says signs in the street can block traffic. Handing out tickets to parking attendants is part of the overall “mobility initiative” that is targeting jaywalking and bike-riding on downtown sidewalks.
Just wait until Mayor White sends the sign enforcement guy out to ticket them for not having permits!
