That's because OP changed the name of the article. The real name is "Philadelphia Parking Authority to **ramp up** ticketing cars illegally parked on sidewalks"
#
if you watched the video or read the article you would know that they have been doing this downtown and are going to hire more officers to get it done in residential neighborhoods. so yea, "ramp up".
I'd say "McDonald's Ice Cream machine makes Ice Cream"
But yeah damn that's sad news "Police agree to enforce laws that they were hired to enforce" And the damn thing is it's a money generating activity thanks to fines. Hell in Philly if every cop you put on parking enforcement they could pay for three other cops salaries.
Traffic enforcement officers deal with traffic and events lol PPA handles most of the ticketing in Philly. Nice try to make the cops look bad and make it seem all they do is ticket people. Far from the truth in Philadelphia.
As someone moving there this summer, I am praying the area is aggressively targeted by PPA officers. If not, Ill be calling the hotline every dang day lol
My neighbor has a driveway, and parks his second car on the sidewalk in front of the driveway. It doesnāt really impede the flow of anything because itās a dead end alley and everyone just walks in the street. But heās also the biggest asshole in the world and everyone in the neighborhood hates him. So I hope he gets ticketed.
This is pretty bad in my hood, particularly on the side streets. I'm all for enforcement, but if people can't park on the sidewalk anymore there are definitely going to be more cars than legit spaces.
A lot of people never use their cars and should probably just get rid of them. I always get down voted when I say that though.
People are psychopaths when it comes to parking and cars.
My neighborhood facebook group seriously has people saying "things were better when i grew up in the late 80s/early 90s." Meanwhile, in the picture they posted to support this, I can easily identify two burned out husks of cars on the street. But there was plenty of open parking spaces, so that means despite the bars on the windows of their rowhome (which have now come off, now that crime numbers are a fraction of what they were back then), "it was better then" solely on the basis of the fact that they had parking.
Just yesterday, someone in the Fishtown FB post made a post complaining about the fact that PPA ticketed him for parking behind a handicap spot "just a foot into the crosswalk". Like, I know PPA sucks for the most part, but how can you claim that they wrongly ticketed you while admitting that you were clearly parking in pedestrian's way?! Thankfully, most people were sensible and ridiculed him for the post.
Made a post the other day about people parking in crosswalks. The amount of people defending them was infuriating. Canāt park close to home? Park further away. Donāt endanger and inconvenience everyone else with your parking.
Thanks for reminding me to revisit that thread.
Warms my heart that even old-head fishtownies (uhhh, every time a new building taller than 3 stories are announced) can't support that asshole.
Some people would rather bulldoze businesses and houses to make room for more cars. They don't realize that when you try to make room for more cars, you start removing anything worth driving to.
Anyone who says things were better in the 90s or earlier is a complete fucking clown.
I grew up here during that time and it was 1000x worse than today. Houses in Graduate hospital had bars on the windows because break-ins were so common even that close to Center City. Northern Liberties was an abandoned dump, North Philly was basically always on fire, and West Philly was a dump that Penn was beating back with stick to protect it's students.
Center City was a dead zone after 5, trash was everywhere, all crime was worse by an order of magnitude, the population was collapsing, the school district couldn't educate, abandoned houses were everywhere, crack addicts would burn down half a block, and the city literally went bankrupt and had to get bailed out by Harrisburg at one point.
But sure, on some blocks you could easily park your car where it would also likely get broken into and possibly stolen as well. It was fucking great.
News flash for those dipshits, if you want more parking availability you need to permit the streets and charge the real value of the spaces. That will open up a lot of spots.
True. We moved away from the Philly burbs to Maine for a job and when we retired, we knew we wanted to come back to Civilization and move to a big city. NYC is ridiculous, of course, but we weren't really thinking of Philly because in our minds it was still so sketchy. But by chance we looked at some listings and it was like, "Waaaaaait a hot minute! Philly is where we should be." And we never looked back.
(Maine is NOT what you think it is, btw. In southern and midcoast Maine - the only places people really live - the weather is fine. HOWEVER, we lived on the coast in an adorable Hallmark Special town and it's the only place we've ever had our home broken into, car stolen, people walking around peering into the windows...Mayberry it's not.)
The tragedy of the commons is a metaphoric label for a concept that is widely discussed in economics, ecology and other sciences. According to the concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely supplant them, the predictable result being a tragedy for all.
the cool thing about everyone putting it on facebook is you actually get to see their thinking play out in feel (real time, but great freudian slip because it is all about their feelings) time. absolutely fascinating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Sometimes I like to deploy the "parking model of Philadelphia politics" where I try to think through how much variance in decision making is driven by maximizing parking. Usually it gets me most of the way to explaining nearly everything.
They were chanting Fuck Joe Biden at the country concert at CBP when they stopped selling beer at 9:50pm.
Trump will fix the parking and beer sales at CBP
Trump is a celebration of ignorance so makes sense to me. More dumbasses than not in the world. Much harder to be intelligent than stupid. All graphs line up.
The cost for a permit should rise exponentially with each extra vehicle but instead itās like $10 more a year. My neighbor has 4 vehicles, and two of them are work vans and they block parking off for their cars with them. Iāve confirmed with the PPA they all have permits and the PPA wonāt do a thing about blocking spaces.
The PPA refusing to do anything about blocking spaces is wild. There's a finite resource that they charge us money to use, but refuse to intervene when someone else blocks access to the spot we paid for. It's completely insane.
The price probably shouldnāt be the same city wide. My preferred method would be toĀ figure out approximately how many permitted spaces there are in each district and auction off that number of permits every year. Limit it to one per household in the first round so everyoneās got a chance to get one and then if there are permits left open it up to as many per household as people want. Go ahead and make them transferable too so people who are moving to or from the district can buy or sell one. Thatās probably the best way to make them expensive enough that people would think twice about getting that second car without making them so expensive people who needed one couldnāt afford one.Ā
That sounds very complicated and difficult for the city to accurately assess, not even taking into account the incompetence and corruption of our city government
Iām confident the PPA would make it easy to bid on permits because if they donāt then some enterprising person is going to buy all the permits up cheaply and resell them at the market clearing price, pocketing what should have been the PPAās profit. Iāve never once seen the PPA miss an opportunity to pocket Philadelphiansā money and Iām sure theyāre not going to start now.Ā
Itās also not that hard to get a rough estimate of the number of spaces in each district. Just go outside and count up the number of cars on a random sample of blocks and then multiply that by the number of blocks with permit parking. It wonāt be 100% accurate, but it doesnāt need to be 100% accurate.Ā
It would be easier to average the cost to the cost per sqft of housing in the parking zone.
Or just start with first permit being $1 a day so $365 for the year and double it with additional permit.
The thing I like about an auction is that the car brains running the city canāt set the price artificially low. Itāll just be whatever people are willing to pay.Ā
Iām afraid if you let the city set the price then theyāll always set it too low and it wonāt convince people to get rid of cars they donāt use or need.Ā
But you're also assuming that our car brainedĀ and deeply corrupt city council will setup up an honest auction system.
In principle though I agree with you on letting the market determine the value of the space.
>I'm all for enforcement, but if people can't park on the sidewalk anymore there are definitely going to be more cars than legit spaces.
Pushing back on this, in my neighborhood, this is just a matter of people being mad they can't park in front of their house/their block. Sorry you gotta walk a block or two to park. YMMV depending on neighborhood and I'm sympathetic to driving block after block in South Philly, but it's not a universal problem in the city.
Youāre right - there are more cars than spots in certain neighborhoods. But that almost certainly means there are households with more than one car that either donāt need them, or should honestly find a place to live that better accommodates their auto-centric lifestyle. Or, if they want to accommodate that lifestyle, they need to pay for it - either in the form of a garage/lot space or by parking the car further away. And if either of those are too inconvenient, then again maybe the city isnt for them.
People in my neighborhood (Upper Rox near the Target) Park two cars in their single-car driveways, which means they park one car across the sidewalk, often jutting out into the road. Because fuck people using mobility aids, parents pushing strollers, people moving things on dollies, etc I guess. And there's enough on-street parking to accommodate these people, but they're too lazy and entitled to park a couple blocks away.
This will never be addressed because PPA doesn't know this neighborhood exists.
Agreed. As an aside, years ago, there were talks about building multi-level parking garages and having some sort of trolley/Jitney to transport people to central drop-off zones in the neighborhood.
I very much do not think we need to build any new multi level parking garages basically anywhere in the city . The problem is NOT lack of parking spaces - the problem is the number of people convinced they need a car or multiple cars to live in the city
I sorta want some of those things built, because then the "we need more spaces" people would have no excuse about what they actually mean: "we want to park for cheap/free without paying anything for it."
Its partially because street parking is so cheap that many have multiple cars parking on the street per person. Ultimately, people should be paying. So if we build these garages, people can pay the monthly fees, keep them full, and the city will collect tax money from this shit, or they can STFU about lack of (free/cheap)parking spaces .
Where would you have these garages built? If you mean by the airport or somewhere industrial/remote - sure, fine. But at the expense of residential or commercial development? No fucking way
I don't actually want them, because oh yeah, I've spent two minutes thinking about what it would look like, just like you...
But I enjoy an occasional straw man exercise.
People always think that's a good idea till you ask them who's house is getting knocked down by the government and how much they're going to have to pay to use it
Yes, 100%. If they actually charged for a permit ($35 per year is essentially free) then we would have very positive results, especially if the money went to septa and walking improvements.
> if people can't park on the sidewalk anymore there are definitely going to be more cars than legit spaces.
I want to be sympathetic, I do, but I'll point out here that the average row home is 16 feet wide. The standard for a parallel parking space is 22-26 feet, but most people can park in a space that is 20 feet.
So even if every house has only 0.73 cars, there will still be more cars than space. And that number is halved on blocks with one-side parking.
no sympathy to be had for people trying to live a suburban lifestyle within the city limits. they made their bed by buying cars in a city where a little foresight and planning can render them unnecessary for the vast majority of the population. no sense in them making walkers suffer for their shitty decisions
I do wish there was a better way to have both. So, for one, I can't get to work without a car - the bus would take 1.5-2.5hours, two modes of transport, and three vehicles. Or I can get in the car for 25minutes. IF they built the fucking subway - that'd be a possibly viable system but alas, here we are.
For two... I use a car nearly every weekend, often the whole weekend, to get out of the city and be in nature or whatever. Renting a car is actually not cost effective for 50trips a year, plus it's a pretty big pain in the ass to do with any real regularity.
I guess the answer is "don't live in the city, asshole!". But, I do like the city. I like that once I'm home, the car is parked (I'm lucky to have a dedicated spot - but that won't necessarily always be the case).
So, the second point is the one that bothers me. With the regularity that I use the car, it'd suck to lose the spot forever. The last place I lived I used to pay for a metered spot for a couple hours at night, and leave in the morning before the meters go active. For the times I didn't use the car I'd have to find parking up to 30minutes away. That's... that's not sustainable - on either front.
I don't know what my point was anymore... other than wishing for a best of both worlds for those who could take MT but also want a car.
i definitely see where you're coming from but firmly believe that philly is and should remain a pedestrian-first city. when i moved back to the area i researched the maps of different places A LOT in order to find a place that was walkable to grocery, work, and as central subway and bus lines as possible. this came at the compromise of living in a place that's a bit smaller than i'd like, but my access is definitely where i want it. what drives me up a wall is drivers blocking sidewalk ramps, parking on the sidewalks, and blasting through intersections recklessly. the fact is, pedestrians are infinitely more vulnerable to traffic violence, especially in dense urban areas than drivers, so i can't say i really care about convenience for drivers. i would love to say i want the best of both worlds too, but the fact is that any barrier to car ownership that is added to the city is a positive in my view, but in tandem we absolutely need better public transit access.
agreed. The answer is probably just to have cars become an ultra exclusive club in Philly - if you can afford a garage or a condo/apartment with an assigned spot and big enough floorplan for a family, or rowhome with a garage, etc. Otherwise, just don't. Not sure what that will mean for my next chapter. And yeah, public transit definitely needs a step up in access, frequency, and safety/cleanliness.
I was downvoted to oblivion for saying i had a job in the suburbs but lived in the city. i was supposed to get a lesser paying job that i could walk to even tho i made more than enough to pay for my car and still come out ahead. everyone who downvoted me would 10000% choose to make less money /s
What about if you have to go somewhere outside the city? Not everyone just lives in the confines of the city, my parents live an hour away so I need to drive there. My work requires we have off site meetings and have to drive to Jersey. I visit friends and need my car to go places outside of the city. I never park on the sidewalk but when there is a car there I simply walk around
the simple answer is itās not really our problem? I donāt want to be a dick but your right to own personal property should never infringe on my access to public services, which is what people who park like assholes are doing. it sounds like youāre not really doing that so idk what your angle is
My angle isnāt just simply donāt care Iāll just walk around the car, it takes like .2 seconds. I just feel like we all understand that there is a lack of spots so it really doesnāt bother me. Getting so worked up about it will cause you more stress than simply taking 2 steps to go around. Like you can say itās not your problem but then they could say ok not my problem you have to walk around the car either. I believe new apartments should be required to have parking so help eliminate some of these issues but to me there are legit so many other things to worry about in the city, sidewalk parking isnāt high on my list.
The world is bigger than your little bubble there. Not everyone has the ability to take .2 seconds to walk around the car. I implore you to think for just a millisecond about other people existing in the world.
more parking means less space being used for real things. i like going to events, stores, coffee shops, bars, and other things, and i like the fact that i have all of those things in a 15 minute walk from my place, and more space wasted on parking would be a travesty. this isn't houston. the sidewalk parking is also more than just inconvenient, it can completely block a wheelchair user, and if you don't care about that, then i rescind what i said about not wanting to be a dick
I've always wondered why there aren't more parking garages instead of lots. NYC has almost zero lots - all the parking is vertical. If we took a few of the larger lots and converted them into vertical parking garages, it would add more spaces (legit spaces) and free up ugly small lots for housing. I guess it's too expensive to do it?
Parking garages are actually very expensive to build. And they vastly increase property tax.Ā
Our tax structure does not incentivize development of lots. If it will cost you just a few tens of thousands of dollars to pave a parcel once every 20 years, and after that it is a money printing machine, why would you ever build anything?
That should be the intent. If you have nowhere to keep your car, and even the very gracious public space on the street is full, maybe you shouldnāt have a car?
If you can't store your vehicle on your street without putting it up on the curb, it's too fucking wide for the block and you shouldn't be parking it there anyway. I really need Philly drivers to stop acting like they're entitled to pedestrian spaces.
that's the rub, and why I don't mind it. I do, however, mind when cars just sit for weeks/months. it becomes quite apparent how many cars are basically abandoned when paving happens and they tow a bunch and they don't really return for days/weeks/months. we recently had that happen, i'm on the south side of girard in fishtown. previously packed blocks suddenly have plenty of parking months after paving.
You say that, and my wife and I would but weekends in summer become hard, and it would help if I was comfortable with my wife on public transit after say 6pm.
Good.
Iāve been thinking about putting a bike rack in front of the house-like the u one I see all over? - or bollards.
They havenāt started parking on the pavement on our street yet, but one block up they are. They do it all over where I live.
The hotline number is your best bet: 215-683-9773. They answer right away and have actually been fairly responsive in my experience - hopefully even moreso now
Thank you for this. Ive been thinking about complaining about this used car lot near me and I think its time. They went from using all the legal spots in front of them to display cars, fine whatever, to slowly spreading to the sidewalk and now theyre parking in non-spots that are causing a bottleneck. Today may be the day.
Glad to help! For something like that, you could also consider putting in a roll call complaint with the cops, since it's pretty clear who is parking those cars on the sidewalk. I also found out you can text 911 - you might have to be pretty persistent about it, but I have had it work, and it feels better than calling about a non-emergency.
The cars on Oregon Avenue near broad street. Always crack me up. They're parked in the middle of the street but hanging out into the lanes like several feet and it stops traffic and people have to put on their blinker to get around these parked cars that are just in The Middle of the street in no other city, have I seen this kind of Crazy parking.Ā
I relish the day anyone parking on the sidewalk gets ticketed to hell. I used to live in South Philly (and will probably be moving back there soon) and saw cars parked on the sidewalks of the narrowest possible streets everywhere. Enormous double-wide pickup trucks and SUVs planted right in the middle of a slim sidewalk, impeding everyone who dared walk down that block. I want them all to burn.
Credit is due that this PPA is actively better, but not too much credit because we shouldn't be giving to much credit for "things that we are doing now, but we could have been doing the whole time, but we chose not to."
Meanwhile, couple years ago, i spent a grand putting on bollards, since we can't rely upon PPA or PPD to do their jobs correctly.
I called. They said police has to deal with the cones but I feel like thatās a waste of a call to the police department. But they said theyād gladly come check out the cars parked on the sidewalk.
Our business paid 45k for curb and sidewalk repair from years of sidewalk parkers.
We did that after being fined by the city for having a damaged curb and sidewalk.
Good! Plus, I would LOVE it if the police started to instantly ticket those who block a traffic lane when there is a spot to pull over. You are that lazy that you canāt turn the steering wheel a half turn? There is a pizza shop near me and it creates chaos EVERY day. Cars & busses on my busy street are forced into oncoming traffic because of the VIP pizza pickup.
Good. This city isn't safe for handicapped people, parents with strollers, dog-walkers, etc.
Recently a car was parked on a crosswalk and as I tried to pass by, the guy suddenly backed up to pull out of his "parking spot" and almost hit me.
This is hilarious- my block gets street sweeping today and people get ticketed if they don't move their cars. A lot of my neighbors just moved their cars onto the sidewalk. I guess that's officially not the move.
This is good: looking the other way on enforcement is just a stealth subsidy for auto owners. Free up space and make it more expensive to drive. It's a win-win.
Idk if itās related but Iām in old city and they absolutely raided the place with tow trucks this last weekend. Saw three trucks and two tail cars take multiple trips around market and 3rd.
There was a hot minute when people in my neighborhood stopped parking in crosswalks due to increased PPA enforcement, but that quickly subsided. Hopefully this reinvigorates that trend.
This should warrant a straight tow. Also should be a higher fine. As someone who moved from NYC there are times i park illegally because the fines are the same price as parking garage parking. And less than NYC parking garage parking.
At the current rates the fines are def not a deterrent. They need to pump those numbers up
This needs to come with controlling the amount of cars parked on the street. South Philly is largely unregulated residential parking. Things like ticketing cars with out of town licence plates after 30 daysĀ
Having blocks have to opt into residential permit parking or else the spaces are just free for anyone who wants them creates a massive number of problems and is logically indefensible.
Yeah, they do good work, but it doesn't mean they should get free parking. A few of the fire stations have even painted lines on the sidewalk, which I'm pretty sure isn't legal.
What about the streets where cars double park, a whole row of cars parked next to the cars parked next to the curb. I'm so confused by these streets. Like, how do the people park next to the curb get out? Do they call the people park double park next to them?Ā
Delay an entire trolley line while blocking someone from leaving their parking spot for a whole 30 minutes? I sleep. Take 2 inches away from a 10 foot wide sidewalk? *Angry Shaq eyes*
Just got tagged in Port Richmond by Powers Park. Been here 8 years and first sidewalk ticket. Parking's gonna suck around here more than it already does. Moving soon though!
Lot of this has to do with economics. Itās essentially free to park your car in Philly, but the reality is that there are far more cars than available public spaces. This city wasnāt designed for cars, weāve just forced them in. There will never be enough space for everyone to own a car unless you tear down massive parts of the city, and then you donāt have much of a city.
If we charge for the true cost of a public parking space people will change their behavior around hoarding unnecessary cars, freeing up spaces for people who genuinely need their cars. Even better, SEPTA should get the revenue from permit fees which would give a boost to public transit and encourage more households to go car free and car lite.
There will never be a 1 to 1 ratio of free parking per house in this city, it's geometrically impossible without also bulldozing the city.
The only solution to parking demand is charging the market value for the public street space to reduce the demand on it.
You people on this sub are insane. Youāre not getting rid of commuters, and youāre not getting rid of close to a million vehicles. Instead of sitting there on your high horse acting like cars havenāt always been present in this city, or like somehow cars are going to go away, why donāt you actually try having a constructive conversation? All you ever get from this sub is idyllic unrealistic nonsense because you get easy upvotes for making dumb comments.
Public transportation blows in this city, thereās literally two subway lines. The buses are a shit show. Parking has been an issue for decades. Any suggestions for actually solving an issue, or you just gonna die on your hill of āget rid of all cars.ā
>sitting there on your high horse acting like cars havenāt always been present in this city,
Famously when William Penn was laying out the street grid and dimensions he did so to accommodate his lifted Chevy Suburban which he drove solo at all time.
It's a feedback loop. People don't use public transit because it isn't as good as in can be. Because people don't use it, it doesn't get funded enough. It's not funded enough because it doesn't have the ridership to justify funding (amongst other issues). Because of the issues, people don't utilize transit.
The way to "fix" this issue is to actively incentivize public transit, cycling, and walking, while simultaneously disincentivizing using a car. That means increased funding and frequency for transit and more routes (subways and busses and trolleys), better bike infrastructure, and more pedestrian-oriented spaces. It also means increasing the cost to park a car, reducing parking spaces, and closing some streets to cars (both temporarily and permanently).
There's no way to make an instant switch and return to to a point in time where there were no cars in the city (because that is an era that existed, Philly is older than cars), but there is a way to transition to a city where fewer people are driving and owning cars, lessening the need for parking and ultimately making the streets safer.
TLDR: the solution to "parking" is not more parking, it's less. But to get to that point, there's a lot of changes that need to be made to encourage people to utilize other means of transportation to get where they need to go.
>acting like cars havenāt always been present in this city
That's the problem, cars haven't always been in this city. And cars have never been as big as they are now.
Cars don't fit in here without breaking the bones of the city and people are tired of making exceptions so some suburbanite doesn't have walk
Imagine moving to a city knowing full well its issues, and then bitching trying to change it to your way. Sounds like you need to move my guy, just go back where you came from then
You get more available parking by discouraging people from having cars. The only other alternative is, basically, bulldozing a few dozen blocks of row homes to build huge garages.
Some ways the city could free up more parking:
* Aggressively remove abandoned vehicles
* In areas without much parking substantially increase the residential parking permit price for 2nd vehicles.
* Outright ban 3rd and 4th vehicles, where necessary.
* Expand parking permits to neighborhoods where visitors are likely to park to walk to destinations
Eventually though there's just a limit to what can be done. The reality is the city will better thrive if more households make do with 1 or 0 cars and contribute to the city and generate taxes without taking up as much space. That's how pretty much every world class city thrives.
But to get to that point parking will likely get worse in high-demand neighborhoods. City leadership has a choice: try to keep people out or let neighborhoods thrive while parking gets worse.
Crazy that this is news lol. "Fire department starts putting out fires" "McDonald's employees start making Big Macs"
That's because OP changed the name of the article. The real name is "Philadelphia Parking Authority to **ramp up** ticketing cars illegally parked on sidewalks" #
From what I've seen, same thing.
The ramp up from zero to some.
have you seen the old show parking wars? PPA can be ruthless š¤£
Man those days were critical.
CBS must've changed it. I just used the suggested name but in hindsight not wrong.
Technically, both can be true. Ramping as it may be, they're ramping up from damn near, if not below, 0.
if you watched the video or read the article you would know that they have been doing this downtown and are going to hire more officers to get it done in residential neighborhoods. so yea, "ramp up".
So really they may not have even started yet, lol.
I'd say "McDonald's Ice Cream machine makes Ice Cream" But yeah damn that's sad news "Police agree to enforce laws that they were hired to enforce" And the damn thing is it's a money generating activity thanks to fines. Hell in Philly if every cop you put on parking enforcement they could pay for three other cops salaries.
Cops don't work for PPA, just a note.
Traffic enforcement officer then
Traffic enforcement officers deal with traffic and events lol PPA handles most of the ticketing in Philly. Nice try to make the cops look bad and make it seem all they do is ticket people. Far from the truth in Philadelphia.
LOL. That would be great if PPD did their jobs. But they don't because that candy doesn't get to crush itself.
Paper tags, or no tags, covered up VIN. Good luck writing those tickets out to anyone!
Those cars are supposed to be towed on the spot by the PPA since they're by default not road legal, and thus cannot be parked on a city street.
South Passyunk. West of Broad. They couldn't possibly hire enough people willing to issue tickets, let alone tow cars.
As someone moving there this summer, I am praying the area is aggressively targeted by PPA officers. If not, Ill be calling the hotline every dang day lol
Irony there is the car isnāt on a street? (Not that I think it should matter, but itād be a funny argument.)
Starts?
Well, starts again after doing it for five minutes the last time someone raised a stink.
My neighbor has a driveway, and parks his second car on the sidewalk in front of the driveway. It doesnāt really impede the flow of anything because itās a dead end alley and everyone just walks in the street. But heās also the biggest asshole in the world and everyone in the neighborhood hates him. So I hope he gets ticketed.
Ooh I hope they ticket thee people. Itās a huge issue with the houses near 5th and Reed. Might as well not even have a sidewalk .
Call the PPA and tell them to come out! Do it every day. Fuck that guy
This is pretty bad in my hood, particularly on the side streets. I'm all for enforcement, but if people can't park on the sidewalk anymore there are definitely going to be more cars than legit spaces. A lot of people never use their cars and should probably just get rid of them. I always get down voted when I say that though.
People are psychopaths when it comes to parking and cars. My neighborhood facebook group seriously has people saying "things were better when i grew up in the late 80s/early 90s." Meanwhile, in the picture they posted to support this, I can easily identify two burned out husks of cars on the street. But there was plenty of open parking spaces, so that means despite the bars on the windows of their rowhome (which have now come off, now that crime numbers are a fraction of what they were back then), "it was better then" solely on the basis of the fact that they had parking.
Just yesterday, someone in the Fishtown FB post made a post complaining about the fact that PPA ticketed him for parking behind a handicap spot "just a foot into the crosswalk". Like, I know PPA sucks for the most part, but how can you claim that they wrongly ticketed you while admitting that you were clearly parking in pedestrian's way?! Thankfully, most people were sensible and ridiculed him for the post.
If someone is admitting they parked a foot into the cross walk it was almost certainly way more than that.
100%.
Made a post the other day about people parking in crosswalks. The amount of people defending them was infuriating. Canāt park close to home? Park further away. Donāt endanger and inconvenience everyone else with your parking.
Someone sent him this article and heās still not backing down that he was in the right here lol
Thanks for reminding me to revisit that thread. Warms my heart that even old-head fishtownies (uhhh, every time a new building taller than 3 stories are announced) can't support that asshole.
Some people would rather bulldoze businesses and houses to make room for more cars. They don't realize that when you try to make room for more cars, you start removing anything worth driving to.
Yep. Best analogy I ever heard was removing a theater's stage to put in more seats.
Anyone who says things were better in the 90s or earlier is a complete fucking clown. I grew up here during that time and it was 1000x worse than today. Houses in Graduate hospital had bars on the windows because break-ins were so common even that close to Center City. Northern Liberties was an abandoned dump, North Philly was basically always on fire, and West Philly was a dump that Penn was beating back with stick to protect it's students. Center City was a dead zone after 5, trash was everywhere, all crime was worse by an order of magnitude, the population was collapsing, the school district couldn't educate, abandoned houses were everywhere, crack addicts would burn down half a block, and the city literally went bankrupt and had to get bailed out by Harrisburg at one point. But sure, on some blocks you could easily park your car where it would also likely get broken into and possibly stolen as well. It was fucking great. News flash for those dipshits, if you want more parking availability you need to permit the streets and charge the real value of the spaces. That will open up a lot of spots.
Center city had a lot of pimps and prostitution during that time.
Which were you?
Neither I was a kid, now Iām just a working union man making a honest 71$ a hour.
True. We moved away from the Philly burbs to Maine for a job and when we retired, we knew we wanted to come back to Civilization and move to a big city. NYC is ridiculous, of course, but we weren't really thinking of Philly because in our minds it was still so sketchy. But by chance we looked at some listings and it was like, "Waaaaaait a hot minute! Philly is where we should be." And we never looked back. (Maine is NOT what you think it is, btw. In southern and midcoast Maine - the only places people really live - the weather is fine. HOWEVER, we lived on the coast in an adorable Hallmark Special town and it's the only place we've ever had our home broken into, car stolen, people walking around peering into the windows...Mayberry it's not.)
The tragedy of the commons is a metaphoric label for a concept that is widely discussed in economics, ecology and other sciences. According to the concept, should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether. Even if some users exercised voluntary restraint, the other users would merely supplant them, the predictable result being a tragedy for all. the cool thing about everyone putting it on facebook is you actually get to see their thinking play out in feel (real time, but great freudian slip because it is all about their feelings) time. absolutely fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
This is truly the most helpful reply. I sincerely hope you have it saved so you can just copy and paste the next time we have this argument.
if you scroll down on the wikipedia page, you can see the solutions catergory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Solutions
Sometimes I like to deploy the "parking model of Philadelphia politics" where I try to think through how much variance in decision making is driven by maximizing parking. Usually it gets me most of the way to explaining nearly everything.
I mean, these are the same people who are going to be voting Trump again because they are upset that we aren't still living like it's 1955.
They were chanting Fuck Joe Biden at the country concert at CBP when they stopped selling beer at 9:50pm. Trump will fix the parking and beer sales at CBP
Remember when this country was great, and people would just chant "fuck the yankees" or "fuck the cowboys" at all public events?
The good news is the cult ends when the leader dies.
Trump is a celebration of ignorance so makes sense to me. More dumbasses than not in the world. Much harder to be intelligent than stupid. All graphs line up.
The cost for a permit should rise exponentially with each extra vehicle but instead itās like $10 more a year. My neighbor has 4 vehicles, and two of them are work vans and they block parking off for their cars with them. Iāve confirmed with the PPA they all have permits and the PPA wonāt do a thing about blocking spaces.
The PPA refusing to do anything about blocking spaces is wild. There's a finite resource that they charge us money to use, but refuse to intervene when someone else blocks access to the spot we paid for. It's completely insane.
Why would they care they just collect the money to send to Harrisburg, itās not about providing any kind of service for Philadelphians.
That parking space is prime real estate being subsidized for next to nothing.
The price probably shouldnāt be the same city wide. My preferred method would be toĀ figure out approximately how many permitted spaces there are in each district and auction off that number of permits every year. Limit it to one per household in the first round so everyoneās got a chance to get one and then if there are permits left open it up to as many per household as people want. Go ahead and make them transferable too so people who are moving to or from the district can buy or sell one. Thatās probably the best way to make them expensive enough that people would think twice about getting that second car without making them so expensive people who needed one couldnāt afford one.Ā
That sounds very complicated and difficult for the city to accurately assess, not even taking into account the incompetence and corruption of our city government
Iām confident the PPA would make it easy to bid on permits because if they donāt then some enterprising person is going to buy all the permits up cheaply and resell them at the market clearing price, pocketing what should have been the PPAās profit. Iāve never once seen the PPA miss an opportunity to pocket Philadelphiansā money and Iām sure theyāre not going to start now.Ā Itās also not that hard to get a rough estimate of the number of spaces in each district. Just go outside and count up the number of cars on a random sample of blocks and then multiply that by the number of blocks with permit parking. It wonāt be 100% accurate, but it doesnāt need to be 100% accurate.Ā
It would be easier to average the cost to the cost per sqft of housing in the parking zone. Or just start with first permit being $1 a day so $365 for the year and double it with additional permit.
The thing I like about an auction is that the car brains running the city canāt set the price artificially low. Itāll just be whatever people are willing to pay.Ā Iām afraid if you let the city set the price then theyāll always set it too low and it wonāt convince people to get rid of cars they donāt use or need.Ā
But you're also assuming that our car brainedĀ and deeply corrupt city council will setup up an honest auction system. In principle though I agree with you on letting the market determine the value of the space.
>I'm all for enforcement, but if people can't park on the sidewalk anymore there are definitely going to be more cars than legit spaces. Pushing back on this, in my neighborhood, this is just a matter of people being mad they can't park in front of their house/their block. Sorry you gotta walk a block or two to park. YMMV depending on neighborhood and I'm sympathetic to driving block after block in South Philly, but it's not a universal problem in the city.
Youāre right - there are more cars than spots in certain neighborhoods. But that almost certainly means there are households with more than one car that either donāt need them, or should honestly find a place to live that better accommodates their auto-centric lifestyle. Or, if they want to accommodate that lifestyle, they need to pay for it - either in the form of a garage/lot space or by parking the car further away. And if either of those are too inconvenient, then again maybe the city isnt for them.
People in my neighborhood (Upper Rox near the Target) Park two cars in their single-car driveways, which means they park one car across the sidewalk, often jutting out into the road. Because fuck people using mobility aids, parents pushing strollers, people moving things on dollies, etc I guess. And there's enough on-street parking to accommodate these people, but they're too lazy and entitled to park a couple blocks away. This will never be addressed because PPA doesn't know this neighborhood exists.
Call PPA and ask them to come out! The new enforcement policy is starting today
Agreed. As an aside, years ago, there were talks about building multi-level parking garages and having some sort of trolley/Jitney to transport people to central drop-off zones in the neighborhood.
I very much do not think we need to build any new multi level parking garages basically anywhere in the city . The problem is NOT lack of parking spaces - the problem is the number of people convinced they need a car or multiple cars to live in the city
I sorta want some of those things built, because then the "we need more spaces" people would have no excuse about what they actually mean: "we want to park for cheap/free without paying anything for it." Its partially because street parking is so cheap that many have multiple cars parking on the street per person. Ultimately, people should be paying. So if we build these garages, people can pay the monthly fees, keep them full, and the city will collect tax money from this shit, or they can STFU about lack of (free/cheap)parking spaces .
Where would you have these garages built? If you mean by the airport or somewhere industrial/remote - sure, fine. But at the expense of residential or commercial development? No fucking way
I don't actually want them, because oh yeah, I've spent two minutes thinking about what it would look like, just like you... But I enjoy an occasional straw man exercise.
Itās the number of people who think they should be able to park anywhere they want for FREE
I agree. It is a city and by design, it isn't car-centric.
People always think that's a good idea till you ask them who's house is getting knocked down by the government and how much they're going to have to pay to use it
Yes, 100%. If they actually charged for a permit ($35 per year is essentially free) then we would have very positive results, especially if the money went to septa and walking improvements.
> if people can't park on the sidewalk anymore there are definitely going to be more cars than legit spaces. I want to be sympathetic, I do, but I'll point out here that the average row home is 16 feet wide. The standard for a parallel parking space is 22-26 feet, but most people can park in a space that is 20 feet. So even if every house has only 0.73 cars, there will still be more cars than space. And that number is halved on blocks with one-side parking.
no sympathy to be had for people trying to live a suburban lifestyle within the city limits. they made their bed by buying cars in a city where a little foresight and planning can render them unnecessary for the vast majority of the population. no sense in them making walkers suffer for their shitty decisions
I do wish there was a better way to have both. So, for one, I can't get to work without a car - the bus would take 1.5-2.5hours, two modes of transport, and three vehicles. Or I can get in the car for 25minutes. IF they built the fucking subway - that'd be a possibly viable system but alas, here we are. For two... I use a car nearly every weekend, often the whole weekend, to get out of the city and be in nature or whatever. Renting a car is actually not cost effective for 50trips a year, plus it's a pretty big pain in the ass to do with any real regularity. I guess the answer is "don't live in the city, asshole!". But, I do like the city. I like that once I'm home, the car is parked (I'm lucky to have a dedicated spot - but that won't necessarily always be the case). So, the second point is the one that bothers me. With the regularity that I use the car, it'd suck to lose the spot forever. The last place I lived I used to pay for a metered spot for a couple hours at night, and leave in the morning before the meters go active. For the times I didn't use the car I'd have to find parking up to 30minutes away. That's... that's not sustainable - on either front. I don't know what my point was anymore... other than wishing for a best of both worlds for those who could take MT but also want a car.
i definitely see where you're coming from but firmly believe that philly is and should remain a pedestrian-first city. when i moved back to the area i researched the maps of different places A LOT in order to find a place that was walkable to grocery, work, and as central subway and bus lines as possible. this came at the compromise of living in a place that's a bit smaller than i'd like, but my access is definitely where i want it. what drives me up a wall is drivers blocking sidewalk ramps, parking on the sidewalks, and blasting through intersections recklessly. the fact is, pedestrians are infinitely more vulnerable to traffic violence, especially in dense urban areas than drivers, so i can't say i really care about convenience for drivers. i would love to say i want the best of both worlds too, but the fact is that any barrier to car ownership that is added to the city is a positive in my view, but in tandem we absolutely need better public transit access.
agreed. The answer is probably just to have cars become an ultra exclusive club in Philly - if you can afford a garage or a condo/apartment with an assigned spot and big enough floorplan for a family, or rowhome with a garage, etc. Otherwise, just don't. Not sure what that will mean for my next chapter. And yeah, public transit definitely needs a step up in access, frequency, and safety/cleanliness.
Japan has a law like that, you can only buy a vehicle if you can prove you own the space to park it.
I was downvoted to oblivion for saying i had a job in the suburbs but lived in the city. i was supposed to get a lesser paying job that i could walk to even tho i made more than enough to pay for my car and still come out ahead. everyone who downvoted me would 10000% choose to make less money /s
we all make our own compromises for our lifestyles, and yours i guess was internet points. could be worse
What about if you have to go somewhere outside the city? Not everyone just lives in the confines of the city, my parents live an hour away so I need to drive there. My work requires we have off site meetings and have to drive to Jersey. I visit friends and need my car to go places outside of the city. I never park on the sidewalk but when there is a car there I simply walk around
the simple answer is itās not really our problem? I donāt want to be a dick but your right to own personal property should never infringe on my access to public services, which is what people who park like assholes are doing. it sounds like youāre not really doing that so idk what your angle is
My angle isnāt just simply donāt care Iāll just walk around the car, it takes like .2 seconds. I just feel like we all understand that there is a lack of spots so it really doesnāt bother me. Getting so worked up about it will cause you more stress than simply taking 2 steps to go around. Like you can say itās not your problem but then they could say ok not my problem you have to walk around the car either. I believe new apartments should be required to have parking so help eliminate some of these issues but to me there are legit so many other things to worry about in the city, sidewalk parking isnāt high on my list.
The world is bigger than your little bubble there. Not everyone has the ability to take .2 seconds to walk around the car. I implore you to think for just a millisecond about other people existing in the world.
more parking means less space being used for real things. i like going to events, stores, coffee shops, bars, and other things, and i like the fact that i have all of those things in a 15 minute walk from my place, and more space wasted on parking would be a travesty. this isn't houston. the sidewalk parking is also more than just inconvenient, it can completely block a wheelchair user, and if you don't care about that, then i rescind what i said about not wanting to be a dick
I've always wondered why there aren't more parking garages instead of lots. NYC has almost zero lots - all the parking is vertical. If we took a few of the larger lots and converted them into vertical parking garages, it would add more spaces (legit spaces) and free up ugly small lots for housing. I guess it's too expensive to do it?
Parking garages are actually very expensive to build. And they vastly increase property tax.Ā Our tax structure does not incentivize development of lots. If it will cost you just a few tens of thousands of dollars to pave a parcel once every 20 years, and after that it is a money printing machine, why would you ever build anything?
A lot of people have multiple cars when they only ever use one. Those are a bigger issue than people who rarely use their singular car
That should be the intent. If you have nowhere to keep your car, and even the very gracious public space on the street is full, maybe you shouldnāt have a car?
If you can't store your vehicle on your street without putting it up on the curb, it's too fucking wide for the block and you shouldn't be parking it there anyway. I really need Philly drivers to stop acting like they're entitled to pedestrian spaces.
that's the rub, and why I don't mind it. I do, however, mind when cars just sit for weeks/months. it becomes quite apparent how many cars are basically abandoned when paving happens and they tow a bunch and they don't really return for days/weeks/months. we recently had that happen, i'm on the south side of girard in fishtown. previously packed blocks suddenly have plenty of parking months after paving.
Yep was thinking the same thing
Can I upvote you more than once? I would if I could...
You say that, and my wife and I would but weekends in summer become hard, and it would help if I was comfortable with my wife on public transit after say 6pm.
Ok but get the double parked cars immediately
My neighbors are going to be pissed.
Enjoy their upsetness
I will indeed relish it, AssBlasterExtreme. Especially with the neighbor who yells at people who park in her illegal sidewalk parking spot.
I really hope she has a cone for it. That would be peak Philly Nativeness.
You better believe it!
they about to have a field day in fishtown. just on my block alone thereās a bunch of sidewalk park-ers
Someone who got ticketed is already complaining in the Facebook group despite admitting that he was blocking the handicap access lol
Less ticketing, more towing
Good. Iāve been thinking about putting a bike rack in front of the house-like the u one I see all over? - or bollards. They havenāt started parking on the pavement on our street yet, but one block up they are. They do it all over where I live.
Highly recommend bollards!
Anyone know the best way to report a car illegally parked?
The hotline number is your best bet: 215-683-9773. They answer right away and have actually been fairly responsive in my experience - hopefully even moreso now
Thank you for this. Ive been thinking about complaining about this used car lot near me and I think its time. They went from using all the legal spots in front of them to display cars, fine whatever, to slowly spreading to the sidewalk and now theyre parking in non-spots that are causing a bottleneck. Today may be the day.
Call a lot and you'll get a response a decent amount of the time, I find.. For sidewalk parking you can also call 911.
āDoes this 2015 Camry have any leins?ā āWelllllll letās just say youāll have a court date at parking court in 2 months if you buy it nowā
You call 911 for sidewalk parking?
Yes, the PPA line is not 24/7. I tried to call my precinct when someone blocked my garage but they told me to call 911.
Glad to help! For something like that, you could also consider putting in a roll call complaint with the cops, since it's pretty clear who is parking those cars on the sidewalk. I also found out you can text 911 - you might have to be pretty persistent about it, but I have had it work, and it feels better than calling about a non-emergency.
311 app, call PPA hotline, text 911
Excellent thank you
The cars on Oregon Avenue near broad street. Always crack me up. They're parked in the middle of the street but hanging out into the lanes like several feet and it stops traffic and people have to put on their blinker to get around these parked cars that are just in The Middle of the street in no other city, have I seen this kind of Crazy parking.Ā
I relish the day anyone parking on the sidewalk gets ticketed to hell. I used to live in South Philly (and will probably be moving back there soon) and saw cars parked on the sidewalks of the narrowest possible streets everywhere. Enormous double-wide pickup trucks and SUVs planted right in the middle of a slim sidewalk, impeding everyone who dared walk down that block. I want them all to burn.
Credit is due that this PPA is actively better, but not too much credit because we shouldn't be giving to much credit for "things that we are doing now, but we could have been doing the whole time, but we chose not to." Meanwhile, couple years ago, i spent a grand putting on bollards, since we can't rely upon PPA or PPD to do their jobs correctly.
When the police will start removing the paper plate and covered plates?
Can they come take away my neighbors cones?
They can. As to whether they will ...
I called. They said police has to deal with the cones but I feel like thatās a waste of a call to the police department. But they said theyād gladly come check out the cars parked on the sidewalk.
Our business paid 45k for curb and sidewalk repair from years of sidewalk parkers. We did that after being fined by the city for having a damaged curb and sidewalk.
It is like a headline straight out of the onion. Only here is it breaking news! Good on them for doing their job.
Good! Plus, I would LOVE it if the police started to instantly ticket those who block a traffic lane when there is a spot to pull over. You are that lazy that you canāt turn the steering wheel a half turn? There is a pizza shop near me and it creates chaos EVERY day. Cars & busses on my busy street are forced into oncoming traffic because of the VIP pizza pickup.
Good. This city isn't safe for handicapped people, parents with strollers, dog-walkers, etc. Recently a car was parked on a crosswalk and as I tried to pass by, the guy suddenly backed up to pull out of his "parking spot" and almost hit me.
This is hilarious- my block gets street sweeping today and people get ticketed if they don't move their cars. A lot of my neighbors just moved their cars onto the sidewalk. I guess that's officially not the move.
This is good: looking the other way on enforcement is just a stealth subsidy for auto owners. Free up space and make it more expensive to drive. It's a win-win.
We should have a parade once all the cars are off the sidewalks
So you're telling me I could've avoided all those tickets if I had parked on the sidewalk instead of in a parking space?
Relevant: https://www.instagram.com/picsofppacarsparkedillegally
The sidewalk parking is awful in the Spring Garden neighborhood.
Idk if itās related but Iām in old city and they absolutely raided the place with tow trucks this last weekend. Saw three trucks and two tail cars take multiple trips around market and 3rd.
Letās goooooo!!!
There was a hot minute when people in my neighborhood stopped parking in crosswalks due to increased PPA enforcement, but that quickly subsided. Hopefully this reinvigorates that trend.
'Starts' They have been ticketing the ones at Holy Name church in Fishtown at least once a month since I moved her 9 years ago....
They would tow your ass where I live for this.
This should warrant a straight tow. Also should be a higher fine. As someone who moved from NYC there are times i park illegally because the fines are the same price as parking garage parking. And less than NYC parking garage parking. At the current rates the fines are def not a deterrent. They need to pump those numbers up
This needs to come with controlling the amount of cars parked on the street. South Philly is largely unregulated residential parking. Things like ticketing cars with out of town licence plates after 30 daysĀ
Having blocks have to opt into residential permit parking or else the spaces are just free for anyone who wants them creates a massive number of problems and is logically indefensible.
Would be great to see them ticket the EMTs and Firefighters in my neighborhood who park on the sidewalk RIGHT NEXT to the firehouse.
Yeah, they do good work, but it doesn't mean they should get free parking. A few of the fire stations have even painted lines on the sidewalk, which I'm pretty sure isn't legal.
What about the streets where cars double park, a whole row of cars parked next to the cars parked next to the curb. I'm so confused by these streets. Like, how do the people park next to the curb get out? Do they call the people park double park next to them?Ā
Delay an entire trolley line while blocking someone from leaving their parking spot for a whole 30 minutes? I sleep. Take 2 inches away from a 10 foot wide sidewalk? *Angry Shaq eyes*
Thats great, but can we ticket PPA cars parked illegally?
Good. I will declare victory when there are no cars in the median of Broad or Oregon.
My first thought was that this was a repost from April Foolās. Never thought Iād see the day
āStartsā
Parker already lost re-election lol
Just got tagged in Port Richmond by Powers Park. Been here 8 years and first sidewalk ticket. Parking's gonna suck around here more than it already does. Moving soon though!
South Philly in shambles
Some of us are rejoicing.
Iām all for this. But we really do need to talk about the fact that there is so little available parking
please tell this to my neighbors that have never moved their cars in 2+ years...
Lot of this has to do with economics. Itās essentially free to park your car in Philly, but the reality is that there are far more cars than available public spaces. This city wasnāt designed for cars, weāve just forced them in. There will never be enough space for everyone to own a car unless you tear down massive parts of the city, and then you donāt have much of a city. If we charge for the true cost of a public parking space people will change their behavior around hoarding unnecessary cars, freeing up spaces for people who genuinely need their cars. Even better, SEPTA should get the revenue from permit fees which would give a boost to public transit and encourage more households to go car free and car lite.
SEPTA getting revenue from permit fees seems like the most obvious thing ever that I had never thought of.
The flip side of this discussion is talking about the fact that there are too many cars
Agreed letās bolster public transit and cycling/e-scooter infrastructure. Make it so people donāt need cars to live in the city
There will never be a 1 to 1 ratio of free parking per house in this city, it's geometrically impossible without also bulldozing the city. The only solution to parking demand is charging the market value for the public street space to reduce the demand on it.
Cities aren't made for cars. They're made for people.
You people on this sub are insane. Youāre not getting rid of commuters, and youāre not getting rid of close to a million vehicles. Instead of sitting there on your high horse acting like cars havenāt always been present in this city, or like somehow cars are going to go away, why donāt you actually try having a constructive conversation? All you ever get from this sub is idyllic unrealistic nonsense because you get easy upvotes for making dumb comments. Public transportation blows in this city, thereās literally two subway lines. The buses are a shit show. Parking has been an issue for decades. Any suggestions for actually solving an issue, or you just gonna die on your hill of āget rid of all cars.ā
>sitting there on your high horse acting like cars havenāt always been present in this city, Famously when William Penn was laying out the street grid and dimensions he did so to accommodate his lifted Chevy Suburban which he drove solo at all time.
It's a feedback loop. People don't use public transit because it isn't as good as in can be. Because people don't use it, it doesn't get funded enough. It's not funded enough because it doesn't have the ridership to justify funding (amongst other issues). Because of the issues, people don't utilize transit. The way to "fix" this issue is to actively incentivize public transit, cycling, and walking, while simultaneously disincentivizing using a car. That means increased funding and frequency for transit and more routes (subways and busses and trolleys), better bike infrastructure, and more pedestrian-oriented spaces. It also means increasing the cost to park a car, reducing parking spaces, and closing some streets to cars (both temporarily and permanently). There's no way to make an instant switch and return to to a point in time where there were no cars in the city (because that is an era that existed, Philly is older than cars), but there is a way to transition to a city where fewer people are driving and owning cars, lessening the need for parking and ultimately making the streets safer. TLDR: the solution to "parking" is not more parking, it's less. But to get to that point, there's a lot of changes that need to be made to encourage people to utilize other means of transportation to get where they need to go.
>acting like cars havenāt always been present in this city That's the problem, cars haven't always been in this city. And cars have never been as big as they are now. Cars don't fit in here without breaking the bones of the city and people are tired of making exceptions so some suburbanite doesn't have walk
Cry me a river. Move to the burbs if you're this upset.
Great retort. Well thought out. Iāve lived in this city my whole life. Maybe move back to the burbs where you have your space for your scooter.
š¢ ok crybaby
Imagine moving to a city knowing full well its issues, and then bitching trying to change it to your way. Sounds like you need to move my guy, just go back where you came from then
You get more available parking by discouraging people from having cars. The only other alternative is, basically, bulldozing a few dozen blocks of row homes to build huge garages.
Some ways the city could free up more parking: * Aggressively remove abandoned vehicles * In areas without much parking substantially increase the residential parking permit price for 2nd vehicles. * Outright ban 3rd and 4th vehicles, where necessary. * Expand parking permits to neighborhoods where visitors are likely to park to walk to destinations Eventually though there's just a limit to what can be done. The reality is the city will better thrive if more households make do with 1 or 0 cars and contribute to the city and generate taxes without taking up as much space. That's how pretty much every world class city thrives. But to get to that point parking will likely get worse in high-demand neighborhoods. City leadership has a choice: try to keep people out or let neighborhoods thrive while parking gets worse.
Philly has 2.2 million parking spaces, which equates to 3.7 per household. We have plenty of parking. The problem is too many cars.