The Parking Spot Paradox
Why more parking makes parking harder
There's been a lot of buzz lately about the protected bike lanes coming to Spruce and Pine. Society Hill residents are concerned about losing parking spots – specifically, their ability to temporarily park in the bike lane when they need to unload groceries or move a couch.
I get it. Really, I do. When you've had access to convenient parking (even legally dubious parking), losing it feels like a downgrade. But here's where it gets interesting: the solution that's been proposed – dedicated loading zones on the opposite side of the street – actually makes everyone's lives easier. Yes, even the people who are currently mad about it.
Let me explain why.
Right now, when someone parks in the bike lane:
Cyclists have to merge into traffic
Drivers have to suddenly accommodate cyclists
Other drivers can't predict when/where this will happen
The person parking is technically breaking the law
Everyone's stress levels go up
With dedicated loading zones:
Everyone knows where loading/unloading happens
No surprise merging
No technically-illegal parking
No playing frogger with your groceries
Two parking spots per block become official loading zones
"But wait," you might say, "we're still losing parking spots!"
Here's where the paradox comes in: when you make parking easier to find (through things like loading zones and better organization), you actually reduce the total number of parking spots you need.
How many times have you driven around the block looking for parking, only to see someone double-parked in the bike lane, making traffic worse for everyone? That person double-parking is a symptom of a bigger problem: we're trying to fit too many cars into too little space, and our current solution is... chaos.
Some quick math: a typical block in Society Hill is about 400 feet long. With current parking rules, you can fit about 20 cars per side (minus intersections). But at any given time, you might have:
Cars double-parked in the bike lane
Cars circling for parking
Several spots that are too small to actually use because people didn't park efficiently
That's a lot of wasted space and frustrated people.
By converting just 2 spots per block to loading zones, we:
Give people a legal place to load/unload
Reduce double parking
Make the street more predictable for everyone
Actually improve parking availability by reducing the time people spend circling
It's counter-intuitive, but sometimes having slightly fewer parking spots, but organizing them better, makes parking easier to find. It's like how having fewer, well-organized kitchen cabinets works better than having more cabinets crammed full of stuff you can never find.
The real paradox isn't just that more parking makes parking harder – it's that our attachment to maximizing parking spaces actually makes it harder to park. By being a bit more strategic about how we use our street space, we can make life easier for everyone – drivers, cyclists, and yes, even people moving couches.
This is all not to mention that, in the long run, by making living without a car in the city more doable, more parking is freed up by folks that choose to live car-free. And with just shy of 70,000 residents and fewer than 13,000 parking spots in Center City, the only way to have enough parking is to get more cars off the road. Win-win.
Let's make driving (and parking) suck less.