The parking problem

Parking, it’s one thing that you have definitely encountered in your lifetime many times. Whether it be you looking for a spot, or your parents cursing at the wheel when they come up empty. For many people in the world, this problem differs, whether it be in rural towns, or a city like Philadelphia. As you may know, the art of parking in Philadelphia has its ups and downs, but I think we can all agree that it is one of a kind. This article says it best when it says, “Philly has a nationally renowned public transit system.” This fully encapsulates the essence of the experience of parking in Philadelphia. So what’s all of this about putting Philly parking down so much, well let’s see.

Another way of looking at it is statistics. Looking at a satellite view, you can see that there are approximately 2,172,896 parking spots in Philly alone. So what’s the problem? Well, it turns out that %60 of these are private, let alone all of the other issues, and comparisons, like housing density to parking, as seen below.

Things like this wouldn’t be possible without the certain rules and regulations that the Philly Parking Authority have set up, or more importantly, haven’t set up.

One of the main causes of this problem is actually tradition. You may not have thought that, but it’s very true in some parts of Philly. In South Philly, the median parking is one of the weirdest sights for tourists. People that come here to visit see these cars in the middle of the street (as seen above) and probably think they’re crazy, but in reality that’s just what the tradition is. Another huge “tradition” here is parking right on the sidewalk. When asked about this, people usually just say something along the lines of “that’s how it’s been done for years, why would we change?”