This is why I think cities should get out of the business of providing free street parking. Take away the street parking, remove parking requirements from residential/commercial development requirements, and let the price of land and market demand dictate how many parking lots get built and parking fees.

Otherwise entitled drivers refuse to accept that city parking space is an inherently limited resource that must be shared, and protest any regulation as if unlimited free parking is some kind of basic human right.

When you take a step back and think about it, it is really weird how many public roads are built two lanes wider than they would otherwise need to be, simply so that people can park their cars on public land.

for the most part I would have thought the idea was mostly to keep delivery and passenger services out of the traffic lanes

I'm sure this varies from one locale to another, but in my experience in various parts of the US, virtually all urban roads with extra width have it just for parking. Much of the time the parking is so full that there's no room for delivery vehicles and passenger dropoff/pickup to use anything but the travel lanes, and even when there is room they often can't be bothered.

There are places where space is carved out just for loading and not parking, but it's not the common thing, especially in residential areas.

As a property owner will tell you. That public land isnt public but is an easement on private land.

I thought it was the other way around, typically: the city owns not only the street but a fair distance beyond the curb, and the adjoining property owner is required to maintain that area even though it's not theirs.

Nobody is arguing that incorrectly issued tickets shouldn't be challenged. It depends if you think knowingly abusing the system to evade responsibility for wrongdoing is a reasonable and valid defence. This isn't just an us versus them situation. We all have an interest in parking space being appropriately regulated, to our mutual benefit. It's not inappropriately parking vehicle drivers versus 'the state' and sticking it to the man. It's inappropriately parking vehicle drivers versus other vehicle drivers, pedestrians and in fact pretty much everyone who lives in cities.

I happen to think that all accusations of crimes (or non-criminal infractions) should be challenged, not just those which are false.

I see this as a miniature version of the extremely worrying argument about plea bargaining, that it is necessary because the courts couldn't handle the huge volume of trials that would be required without it.

If you're handing out so many violations that you can't handle everyone engaging in an active defense against them, then you're doing something deeply wrong, and the solution isn't to discourage people from exercising their legal rights.

Yes, we all have an interest in parking space being appropriately regulated, but we all have a much greater interest in the state's punitive power being appropriately exercised, and I'm sure there are ways to achieve both anyway.

I've not really seen much indication that they're abusing the system. The one commenter above claims the app sent the same letter twice, someone who works for Fixed said that they don't send the same form letter every time and both tickets must have had the same error (which would generate the same letter). In light of that, I don't see why a form letter specific to what makes the ticket invalid is an issue. Why should someone have to come up with a hundred different way to say "There isn't a 'No Parking' sign within X feet, as per city ordinance YYYY".

I also just want to point out, the SFMTA has brought this on themselves. If they didn't have such an egregious erroneous ticket rate, Fixed could never be profitable. They only get paid if you don't have to pay the ticket, so if the SFMTA had an error rate of 5% rather than 33% Fixed wouldn't have enough to work with.