City Departments Discuss Reasons Behind Ticketing

A member of the Cambridge traffic department yesterday supported the Student Council's suggestion that the University was being more than a good citizen on its ticketing policy, since, he said, the students were being "hit twice as hard as the local residents."

The Council had suggested that "good citizenship" was an inadequate rationale for the ticketing crackdown, since the ticketing definitely discriminated against students.

One other city official supported the Student Council's arguments against certain rationales, but a third disputed one of the Council's contentions. No one contacted in the Harvard administration would comment.

In its meeting on Monday night, the Council had suggested that the real reason behind the ticketing is not to clear the streets for fire-fighting, as has often been alleged, since it would then seem equally impertaive to forbid parking during the daytime.

The Cambridge fire captain agreed in part. Although he pointed out that parked cars were a great obstruction to the big fire trucks, particularly on a narrow street, he agreed that they were as much a hindrance during the day as at night.

The Council had also suggested that ticketing was not for the purpose of allowing Cambridge to clean the streets, since the city seldom cleaned the streets anyway. But an official of the Public Works Department stoutly denied this contention. "We clean every street in Cambridge at least one night a week," he said, "and we clean the bigger ones two or three times a week."