This Means You

A Public Service Announcement from East Falls Rants on Facebook:

(Posted to the Facebook group East Falls Rant Your A$$ Off August 14, 2018.) 

Neighbors agree: making the most of our shrinking street parking is imperative! Please: pull up to the signs.  And you only need like a foot between cars, just a little room for people to get in & out.

COMMENTS FROM EF RANTS ON FACEBOOK:

Learn how to park and we will get along nicely.  — Thomas M.

Im seriously about to paint lines on the street for cars… Not only that but yesterday I counted 15 cars with no permits on sunnyside… it’s bad enough paying for a permit but even worse after 6 you have to hunt spots on your own street.  — Jay L.

Jay, Rob/Surge has come in after parking 2 blocks away many times and said he was gonna paint parking lines. Not being able to park on your own street if you get home after 4:30 pm is insane.  — Kim M.

how do you know that there wasn’t another car parked illegally….nose beyond the no parking sign, with tail taking up the “WTF” space in your photo, thereby resulting in the white car parking where it did? I see this all the time on my street, where a big f-ing truck has taken up more than one spot; normal size car parks behind, truck leaves and 1/2 a space is left with everybody bitching and blaming the unlucky driver who parked behind the truck. these things happen.  — Carolyn S. 

Or a motorcycle could’ve been parked there and moved.  — Carolyn F. 

I’m near the station and there seems to be random nights when there’s way more cars than usual and people are parking in technically illegal spots. I never really figured out the causes of that. It does seem to have gotten a bit more crowded in the last week or so which made me wonder if the college students were back.  — Johnpaul G.

What you’re not seeing in this picture is the alley at the left of this property. If the person pulled up to the sign, two (maybe three) cars could have fit in between the signs and alley. Meg N.

Some people are just inconsiderate.  — Sandra E.

Who kicks someone out of a Rants and Rave page? Those pages are brutal, as implied by the name. If they want to censor then name it Kittens and Unicorns, we are all friends…. Benjamin S.

WATCH THIS: Parking Makes Sense in under 90 Seconds 

The 2015 video above helped promote sweeping parking reforms in the City of Ottowa, which is now undergoing unprecedented growth, much of it thanks to the elimination of parking minimums which allowed for high-density building (like shopping centers and affordable apartment towers with stores and cafes on the ground floor).

The same principles apply for US cities, too — everywhere people and cars exist. As Philadelphia Council wrestles with its own parking reforms, here in East Falls let’s appreciate every free inch we’ve still got.

TRUE STORY:  free parking comes at a cost to the whole community. For starters, it permanently eats up land that could be used for parks, gardens, vendors, art, town squares, historic architecture… Overhead maps of cities before and after parking minimum legislation show new wide swaths of flattened asphalt in the latter. If you love trees and public spaces, parking minimums are not your friend.

Affordable housing is another trade-off: “free” parking isn’t free for developers who must purchase enough space to meet requirements. To maximize profits, they build luxury residences that then upset the tax rates for all neighbors.

Perhaps the biggest smack of all, though: parking minimums change a neighborhood to accommodate cars rather than people. And that’s just wrong because people are awesome.

Moving forward with new development, perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves how much we want to plan our neighborhoods around cars? We have a great bike route downtown, the regional rail — in five years, driverless cars could make ownership unnecessary. Maybe having a walkable city with affordable housing is worth a little compromise, in this department?

Or maybe not (I’m looking at you, Midvale!). Hopefully we’ll have opportunities to learn, listen, and voice our opinions along the way. Meanwhile, park kindly, East Falls.

Or else we’ll Rant about you.

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