PPA Cracking Down on Bike Lane Parkers

The Philadelphia Parking Authority is cracking down on cars parked in bike lanes.

New numbers from the PPA show the agency and police issued nearly 350 tickets for the offense from January through March.

PPA Deputy Executive Director Corinne O'Connor said the flurry of tickets began since the agency started urging people to report vehicles parked in bike lanes through Twitter.

"You can tweet if you see a vehicle parked in the bike lane," O'Connor said. "That will then automatically go to our Twitter account which will then be forwarded to the ticketing department and then therefore we can send out an enforcement officer to issue a a ticket if the vehicle is still there."

Connor said sometimes the vehicle moves before the enforcement officers show up to issue a ticket.

"I mean you're talking 5, 10, 15 minutes later. But if the vehicle is still parked there they will receive a ticket," she said.

O'Connor said the tickets cost up to $75.

She said during three months of the Unblock Bike Lanes Twitter campaign, the Parking Authority received 55 complaints related to about 30 different blocks. She says Pine Street between 3rd and 20th logged the most complaints.

Even with the social media effort, the numbers haven't changed much.

She said the number of tickets issued during the period is pretty typical.

As the PPA continues to crack down, one man is taking matters into his own hands. Michael Warrington launched a social media campaign and created a website focusing on members of a local church whom he claims are illegally parking in bike lanes.

According to Warrington, attendees at Tenth Presbyterian Church on 17th and Spruce Streets have continuously parked in lanes reserved for bicyclists.

“The purpose is to stop religious service attendees at 10th Presbyterian from illegally parking their cars in the bike lane on Spruce Street between 16th and 19th Streets,” Warrington said.

Warrington arrived outside the church on Sunday around 7 a.m. for a protest. Very few other protesters were there with him however. Despite this, Warrington is continuing his campaign in the hopes that it will gain more support.

"Other advocacy groups have tried this," Warrington said. "But the progress is impossibly slow. I'm hoping to bring more attention to the problem through the protest."