Parking Wars

Today my family and I spent most of my time watching TV. While channel surfing we came across a marathon on A&E called "Parking Wars". It's a reality TV show that shows the daily events of the Philadelphia Parking Authority. The show has periods where the camera crew follow "meter maids", tow truck drivers and the staff at the impound lot.

As you might expect, the public that is shown is not in a good mood. Most of the public is either being ticketed for being parked in a no parking zone, next to a fire hydrant or in a rush hour zone. One lady we saw today was double parked. Other vehicles were having a "boot" placed on a tire so they couldn't leave or the vehicle was being towed. These vehicles had an excess in parking tickets.

My wife and I watched this show with interest because we own a business that at one time was on Broadway in downtown Paducah. The parking on Broadway in this part of town is similar to parking in a big city. The city of Paducah actually removed the parking meters long ago but parking in this section of downtown is limited to 2 hour parking. At one time the city's "meter maid" actually marked tires with chalk and ticketing vehicles parked in the same spot for more than 2 hours.

Being a business owner, this two hour parking limitation was very important to us. Western Kentucky residents aren't acustomed to parallel parking nor having to search for a parking space and then walking a couple of blocks to the store. With our business model it's even more detrimental. Many other business' employees or people going to the federal courthouse on 5th Street would park and stay all day. We needed these spaces open for customers.

A couple of years ago we moved our business a couple of blocks to a building that has it's own parking lot. It still has a few parking spaces on the street but we aren't dependent on those.