It has been observed that one can park anywhere and avoid being ticketed by the simple expedient of having an aluminium ladder on the roof of one's car. This identifies the owner of the vehicle as a tradesperson on legitimate business, and thus not subject to normal parking restrictions.
This in itself makes the ladder an almost perfect Universal Parking Permit. Aluminium ladders, however, are relatively cumbersome, and not the sort of thing most people would have on their cars.
An improvement would be to manufacture decoy ladders, ones made of lightweight materials, which do not unfold into actual usable ladders, but look authentic when displayed on the roof of a car. The UPP, being lighter and smaller, could ideally be folded into an even smaller space, and kept in the car's glove box when not in use. Upon parking, the user would take it out, unfold it into the folded-ladder position and position it on the roof of the vehicle.-- acb, Apr 07 2001 Clearly, you live in a city with less militant parking enforcement personnel.
Here in Washington D.C., contractors have been known to add a "ticket surcharge" for work assignments in the city proper, to compensate for the anticipated parking tickets.-- Uncle Nutsy, Apr 07 2001 <Wonders if Uncle Nutsy is good with a rifle>Actually, there's different kinds of license plates to distinguish commercial vehicles which are allowed to park in otherwise off-limits zones, save for handicapped spaces - in Calif., it's simply a matter of not having any letters on the plate - just numerals - pay just a tad more for the plate than mere mortal parkers </Wonders if Uncle Nutsy is good with a rifle>-- thumbwax, Oct 18 2002 As a resident of Washington DC myself I can honestly say that I have witnessed this militant approach to parking tickets. I have even seen ambulances and fire trucks get parking tickets while on emergency calls. Certainly an aluminum ladder on top of a vehicle won't prevent a parking ticket in some cities.
Secondly, I think that driving up with a ladder on the vehicle is much different from pulling one out of the trunk and strapping it to the roof. The parking enforcers will see you do it and write you a ticket in spite.-- Jscotty, Oct 11 2005 random, halfbakery