I didn't realize you meant check them in person. I was suggesting that they (remotely) check the image metadata, compare the photo to the make/model of the registered vehicle, look at the witness's report history, etc. Basic sanity checks before issuing the citation. Checking in person rules out ticketing anyone who parks in the bike lane for less than, say, half an hour.

As for photoshop, the bottom line is that I can already fabricate evidence and sue random strangers if I want to. The fact that this involves a bike lane doesn't fundamentally change anything in that regard. It's high risk and low reward, and unless I missed a fun new crime trend, is not a big problem in practice.

It wastes the driver's time to appeal even if the witness stays home. This raises the cost of parking in the bike lane significantly from its current level of zero.

That's why issuing a citation from the photo you took while they were still parked in the bike lane would help.

> this would be problematic photoshop... you would just need parking enforcement to occasionally double-check on the reported cars to make sure people are not committing fraud

They should be checking all of them. The driver is being accused of a crime, so both the reporter and the person issuing the citation should be subject to some "penalty of perjury" boilerplate, implying that they have at least looked at the thing. And you don't get paid unless the city knows your real identity. So all things considered I think this would be a pretty unattractive form of fraud/revenge.

are you sure we don't just need more of the thing that's not working?

If there wasn't such a large gap between what's theoretically possible (easy, even) and what we wind up with, I would have just kept my mouth shut in the first place!

No argument there, but Central took like seven years and deleted a vehicle lane. It's a little more ambitious than "move the bike lane 6-8 feet south."

tl;dr yes

There are different problems with the two-way lanes (people don't look for bike traffic coming from the "wrong" direction, for example), but they do solve many of the problems with the typical outside single-lanes. It would be much harder to say that either is definitively better.

(And I'd love to be wrong about this, but I don't think they sweep the double-lanes even where it would be feasible.)

Aside from the left-turn issue, two-way bike lanes are usually fine because you can swerve a little to avoid surprises there, too. I was specifically talking about the one-way lanes on the inside like the ones they had to bulldoze on Roland ave. I believe those stats.

This is literally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

> move the bike lane 6-8 feet south, inside the (legally) parked cars

Please don't recommend this in Baltimore. It works in nice places, but here they will half-ass it and make things worse. The implementation that this idea is based off of can be found throughout Europe has two important factors:

1. The "inside" bike lane is separated from the cars by an actual barrier.
2. They clean the bike lane.

These cost money, however, so in Baltimore we skip them and keep only the easy parts of the plan.

Without #2, the bike lane is literally a gutter, where tree limbs, broken bottles, needles, and chicken bones collect. You can't ride in a month after they build it.

Without #1, people just park right next to the bike lane (on top of the painted lines or plastic bollards). This makes an "inside" bike lane far more dangerous than an "outside" bike lane. If someone opens the door on you while you're in an "inside" bike lane, you have two choices: hit the curb and die, or hit the car and die. If someone opens the door on you in an "outside" bike lane, you have two choices: hit the car and die, or swerve into traffic and only maybe die. Your odds are greatly improved! This sounds sarcastic because of how terrible everything is but sadly I am serious.

You should always appeal. Cite the (temporarily) low interest rates that lead to your inflated purchase price, and document all of the comparable properties in your neighborhood that are assessed at less. You should expect to waste a day or two (8-16h) fighting it, but presumably a perpetual 70% increase to your tax bill is worth that. Get a court date if it comes down to it. You will probably be able to settle for a light fucking instead of the whole thing.

If no one fights, the city uses the assessment of house A to increase the assessment of house B one year, and then use the increased assessment of house B to increase the assessment of house A the next. The city wins eventually either way, it's only a matter of how quickly and arbitrarily we allow them to rip us off.