New Website Calls Out Philadelphia's 'Parking Wastelands'

The Philly Parking Wasteland launched in December 2014, and so far consists of three posts a month on a different variety of parking malfeasance, as described by the post.

So for a post dated on February 15, the site goes into detail about the enforcement and policy challenges that have led some neighborhoods in South Philly, like on Washington Avenue along Broad Street, to adopt the practice of parking cars in the middle of the street. The site blames lack of enforcement by Philadelphia police, lax parking permits standards and fees, and a lack of street cleaning schedules as the cause of the de facto parking policy.

There is also a post from February 21 that tackles the 2.5-acre parking lot that serves the the Mid-Atlantic Social Security. The problem is that the surface parking lot sits adjacent to the Spring Garden Station for the city's elevated train line, and creates a "dead-zone" between the "vibrant Old City and Northern Liberties neighborhoods."

That latter post also provides insight into the site's modus operandi of critiquing specific instances of parking wastelands:

'Far too much cheap or free parking creates less people engaged in the fate of the transit system and whole swaths of middle class types who are encouraged to move out of the city all together. Blaming all these woes on a single parking lot is not out of order. It is rather a very clear look at a negative cycle. The simple choices presented to people have huge consequences on the greater health of the city. Why does the Spring Garden station look rundown and under-appreciated? A good place to start would be considering the hundreds of people who drove past it today on the way to work.'