All’s Fair In Love And Parking Wars

Seriously, I have those knives, I think. It’s a set of six. Where are the other five murdered meters?!

[via tet3's Twitter]

Chris Freind Has Clearly Never Been To Philadelphia

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in with America’s Greatest Columnist, Chris Freind, probably because the last time I did I saw he was writing about all the same stuff I do.

Well, in a column yesterday he’s sticking to the quasi-Philadelphia Will Do beat — namely, making fun of John Street — only he’s attempting to make a serious point instead of attempting to send American, or at least Philadelphian, worker productivity to its lowest levels in years.

From his newest column, it is clear Freind has never stepped foot in Philadelphia, and possibly not New York, either. It appears he has gotten all his news about Philadelphia from the crime report on NBC 10. (It follows the opening story, the weather.) It is also clear Freind likes making statistics up instead of actually finding them: “If you take a poll of Center City business owners, you could probably count on one hand how many favor the new regulations.” Yes, you probably could. Maybe. Possibly. Oh, let’s just assume it is, why don’t we!

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Businesses Want You To Pay More To Park

Those of you with cars know the perils of parking in Center City. In short: It’s impossible! Either you drive around for 45 minutes looking for a spot or you end up parking at like 21st and Christian and walking to Rittenhouse or wherever.

Well, it’s about to get a little … uh, more annoying to park, since soon you’ll have to feed the meter ’til 10 p.m. across all of Center City. The reason for this change is not the complaints of economists that on-street parking is too cheap — economists will complain about anything being too inexpensive, including sunshine and rainbows and butterflies — but because businesses want you to pay more to park:

“Because they’re finding that as their hours are extending, and people are staying out longer, they (the businesses) want to have a way (for customers) to park. And if your regulations end at a certain time, that turnover is not taking place.”

Uh, yeahhhh… okay. Fortunately for us, once they install new parking kiosks nobody will have any idea how to use them and the city won’t get any money.

New Rules For On-Street Parking in Center City [KYW 1060]
June 27: How Many Philadelphians Does It Take To Use A Parking Meter?