That's a ton of brands for one ghost kitchen (if you weren't exaggerating), but it's probably just a tiny kitchen with a bunch of ingredients.

Astonishing how "lawful gun ownership" almost inevitably leads to guns getting into the hands of those who are not law-abiding gun owners. How could anyone have possibly foreseen that?

I don't know. The power of inertia is extremely strong. However, the people who want the PPA out (because they want to put their cars wherever) would be very motivated. I'm fairly certain there would be at least one incident of violence or threats of violence over it (trying to get signatures that way).

People are weird about their cars and where they're going to put them. We can't just let people park wherever; the city would soon be covered with so many abandoned/unneeded cars that there wouldn't be room for anything else. That's why city leadership needs to make the unpopular calls on it (that's why we have governments). Unfortunately, we have the government we have, so they just say we can have a solution if we can convince 51% of our neighbors to agree. That way, no one at Council ever needs to make a choice.

Which brings us back to why "just opt in to PPA coverage" is totally inadequate as a response to why PPD isn't helping with this.

PPA opt-in is still insane for other reasons, though. The "voters" that you're trying to convince have probably noticed that instead of paying for a permit, they can have a reserved space for the low price of a stolen traffic cone and a threat to shoot someone, so their motivation to cooperate is low. But that's another whole conversation.

I totally understand the dislike of the PPA as an organization. I can imagine a world in which there's a much better PPA (and city government in general), but the parking enforcement function is extremely important. For me, it's about controlling the parking and not really the money. That's just the least bad way to change behavior, since jailing people over it and expecting people to actually care about their fellow citizens when they make decisions about their car seem equally ridiculous.

Thanks for the perspective, though. I appreciate the thoughtfulness.

It makes sense to opt in to the time restrictions, because those are a service to the residents of the area: you now have a block of spots that the PPA will chase people out of on your behalf. In a sense, the PPA is now working to make spots available for you.

But the reality of the situation is that only the PPA may actually ticket for blocking a crosswalk or hydrant (PPD just won't). That being the case, making the PPA opt in is just asking a block whether or not they want the law to apply on their block (with both inertia and self-interest strongly biasing toward "no"). You shouldn't allow the people who have a strong feeling that they "need" to park in a crosswalk decide whether or not it's legal to park in a crosswalk.

Like it or not, money is how we allocate scarce resources. If you want someone to use something for only a period, you're right: you either charge them for using it or limit the time. The problem with limiting the time is that with a strict two hour limit, everyone who's there longer has to go move their car looking for another free space (both free as in "no cost" and free as in "unoccupied") which vastly increases vehicular congestion (because cars are added to the traffic flow that would have otherwise been parked). So charging for the parking is the least bad solution. Making the parking fees will only make every single parking-related problem we've ever had even worse.

It's not exactly a jurisdictional problem. PPD absolutely can ticket for a blocked crosswalk anywhere they want (the don't have to stay off PPA's "turf". They just don't, because they can justify it by saying "the PPA covers that". But that leaves only business hour enforcement of some crosswalks and none at all on others.

For 900 or so million dollars a year the city absolutely has the right to expect more, but you're right: more finding won't fix that because those paid to give a fuck actually don't give a fuck.

But no matter how much we pay for the streets, the laws of physics dictate that there isn't enough space for everyone who wants to use them. Philly's parking management isn't perfect (in fact, it's awful), but the goal is to enable reasonable uses of the street for parking and disincentivize unreasonable uses. Gotta move your car eventually, so we all have some shot at the space we pay for, too. And the crosswalks/corners/hydrants are just straight safety issues.

That said, with the crosswalks, if poor people paid a small fine for blocking them, but a rich person was instead executed, I'd be on board with that.

We're aware that they're not omniscient. But when we call and tell them where to look for the cars blocking the intersection, they can't even drive over and write a ticket.

In a world where we got the law enforcement we pay for, a PPD unit rolling down the street that saw this would stop of their own volition and just write the ticket. Instead, they just roll by, or park on the sidewalk next to it to catch up on some paperwork/sleep.

That's only partly true. They spend a lot of time there, but don't clear the crosswalks. The same pick up truck has been blocking the crosswalk at 15th and Fairmount for at least two years on and off, in spite of at least two 911 calls a week about it.

That Lack of Service complaint part is really helpful to know; I haven't been doing this. "Organize permit parking on your block" is a ridiculously inadequate solution, though, for so many reasons. First off, it's shitty that the PPA puts the onus on citizens to opt into enforcement, but that would only even work for the block you live on. As soon as you start walking anywhere, you're blocked by dickheads who are blocking a totally different block.

I don't think the PPA gives a shit about anything other than time restrictions, but they're wildly efficient with those. They don't work for the general citizenry; they work for the person who wants to park their car in the spot you've got your car in (whether that's a permitted zone resident or someone else who wants to feed that meter).

If there were organized complaints about specific cars illegally parked in the crosswalk, I would actually suspect that there would be more action taken where the PPD is responsible. At least the last organization has to report somewhere about response times to emergency and non-emergency calls, so there's the faintest shred of accountability.

So, once we convince city council to change the way Philadelphians have to request city services or convince the PPA to take on problems that are well-established not to be theirs, can we then request that the city do their job and give us safe street crossings for people not in cars? Or will

We're repeatedly told by the city that routing non-emergency calls through 911 is the way they want to do it. If it's more efficient like they say, cool. If it's not, that's not an excuse for us to not request city services; they need to change their system.

Doesn't care at all about how disabled neighbors or those with children get around. User name checks out.

I really do feel bad for those Port Richmond residents whose homes came with a legally binding guarantee of a convenient place to park an unlimited number of cars on the public street. When they can't find their guaranteed spot, they have no choice but to park illegally.

Unless that's metered/permitted parking on one or both of those streets, PPA would tell you it's not their problem. So, technically, this would be PPD not giving a shit. You could place a non-emergency call to 911 and report it, then wait and see how none shits they give.

Perhaps we could start a Reddit tree of sorts? When we see this, the whole chain calls and reports it. At least make it inconvenient for PPD to let this go on.

Regardless of the goals of the organization, the ADA (and general decency/competency) gives the city a duty to affirmatively attempt to keep those curb cuts clear so that the disabled (or really anyone) can use them to access the sidewalk. When citizens do the work of finding where the cars are blocking them and then telling the appropriate authorities, who then can't be bothered to come out and even write a ticket, that's just sticking their finger in the eye of anyone who cares about citizens being able to get around the city safely. The city deserves to be sued in that case.

The city got sued about this and settled. Bizarrely, the final settlement said nothing about enforcement of curb cuts/crosswalks (just building more of them). In my daily life, I mostly see the same people blocking the same crosswalks most days and no one with the authority to do anything about it seems to want to do so. It's infuriating; if you ever figure out a way to make the city care, let me know because I'd love to help.

Good to see that, as long as the spot is reserved for law enforcement, there are some consequences for parking where you're not supposed to in Philly.

Because it takes 90 business days to get a car towed with no tags or inspection? And a certain vocal minority of people like it that way?

I like the cut of your jib, random Redditor.

The streets without the high accident and fatality rates, with all the local traffic so that drivers have to slow down? Sounds good to me.

100%. But no one ever really talks about how city streets are also quite dangerous when you have someone pulled over (both for passing motorists, pedestrians and the officer doing the stopping). So avoiding that danger is a positive as well. Sucks for people who accustomed to endangering those around them and would like to keep doing that, though.

Even if it was less people, fewer people on the boulevard is its own reward.