![]() ![]() But, for others, questions still remained. For the most part, readers said that worked out well. Other readers said they gave up on the online system and simply did it the old-fashioned way, using snail mail or visiting the permit office in person. Some said they never even got that letter. Some said they didn’t get the option to renew their old permits, or were told the permits had expired even though no deadline had been mentioned in the city’s letter about Passport. Some readers who tried to use Passport early on told Berkeleyside it had been “impossible to register” at first, and that the system seemed “broken.” One reader said the overall experience had been a “total fail.”Ĭommunity members described the process as bewildering and said it was fraught with conflicting information. “But that’s the city’s responsibility - no matter what. In other cases, linking the address to the proper permit zone proved difficult.Ĭhakko said he did not know why so many problems came up with the addresses. An even bigger problem, he said, was that many of the permit addresses weren’t in the city’s database at all. That required manual checks to confirm the address was legitimate. In some cases, people entered their addresses and it didn’t match what was in the system. Within days, the city published a second announcement to say the launch had been delayed until July 22, “allowing us time to verify data and take other steps for a new system.”Ĭhakko told Berkeleyside that the biggest hurdle in the transition involved the addresses in its permit database. The city describes the Passport program as “innovative” and says it is the “first of its kind in the Bay Area” to use license plates as the permit itself.īerkeley planned to launch Passport on July 1, according to its first announcement, which came out June 25, but there were immediate hitches. Permit stickers became redundant for them. The city has been using automated license plate readers since 2016 and realized its parking enforcement staff could simply use those readers in RPP neighborhoods. In addition to the streamlined application, the city simplified the permit itself by using license plates, rather than bumper stickers, to determine permit status during enforcement operations. This summer, for the first time ever, the city put the whole process online with the goal of instant approval. In 2014, the city gave residents the option to pay for permits online, but they still had to submit paper applications, which required staff review. Staff would review the paperwork and, weeks later, mail back the permit bumper stickers, Chakko said in an interview with Berkeleyside. Until this year, residents had to mail in a paper application with supporting documentation - such as their license and registration information - to get their parking permits each year. The city says the Passport program is the “first of its kind in the Bay Area” to use license plates as the permit itself. To fix the problems, the city plans to increase some of its parking permit fees next year so it can hire more staff and write more tickets. In the spring, staff told the Berkeley City Council that residents aren’t getting what they pay for in terms of enforcement and that the city cannot afford to expand the program, despite neighborhood demand. The city has struggled in recent years to find a way to make its approach to parking enforcement pencil out. A number of readers asked Berkeleyside to get answers from the city about what exactly happened, with an eye toward avoiding those problems in the future. 25, city spokesman Matthai Chakko said last week. In fact, residential parking enforcement in the city was on hold from June 30 until Sept. The city had planned to begin permit enforcement in August but put it off for nearly two months because so many issues arose. That certainly was the case for the city of Berkeley, which overhauled its residential parking permit system in July - putting applications online and ditching bumper stickers - to modernize the program and make it more efficient.īut the transition to the new system, called Passport, was not without its challenges. Sometimes making things easier can be harder than you thought. Berkeley overhauled its residential parking permit system in July - putting applications online and ditching bumper stickers. ![]()
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