Once upon a time, there was a nice, wide city street. You could look directly up the street and, on a clear day, you could see Liberty Place. The street was lined with lovely trees and people planted tiny flowers and plants around the trees and some even decorated them with little white lights that gave the street an air of sophistication when they shone brightly at night. Because it was a SEPTA route, the street was even convenient to public transportation. All in all, it was as nice a city street as you could find.
For the most part, the people who lived on this street were good neighbors. They were polite and courteous and respectful of one another’s property. Like on any other city street, it was not always easy to find parking, but for the most part, people owned only one car per family and it all seemed to work out. But this was all about to change.
For starters, handicapped-parking signs began to sprout. The people who lived in these houses, for the most part, seemed perfectly healthy, but whatever their "handicap," it turned into an asset – a parking space reserved especially for them. After a while, there were so many handicapped signs that some wondered whether there was a mysterious illness sweeping the area. But on our idyllic main street, the evolution of parking was about to manifest itself in another way that would forever change lives.
One-car families became two- and three-car families. And that wasn’t all. Despite the premium on parking spaces and the high cost of gas, people bought bigger and bigger vehicles. The people who lived on the street at first hardly noticed what was happening. But then it became obvious; people who once only double parked in an emergency now did it regularly. What else could they do, they reasoned. There was no place to park. At first, the double parking was mostly on one side of the street, but the cars were getting bigger and more numerous, so soon people double parked on both sides. The street began to disappear under the onslaught of cars.
Parking regulations had always been winked at in this area of the city.
Illegally parked cars were rarely ticketed unless the police received a call from an irate neighbor. Now the police turned their eyes for fear of political repercussions. In fact, the only way you can apparently get a ticket on this street is if you angle park. Madness soon gripped the people on the street. Horns beeped angrily as those who were legally parked could not move their cars in the morning to get to work. Soon only the legal parking spots were vacant because no one wanted to risk parking in them and being unable to get out. Once-friendly neighbors wore scowls and cursed their fate.
The cars parked on the street turned into vans and mini buses and fleets of trucks and then even boats. The lovely trees on the street became a "nuisance" to some because they provided a haven for birds and birds doing what birds often do made the cars messy and no one wanted to park under them. Some people responded by cutting down the trees. And the SEPTA bus began to find it difficult to navigate down the once-wide street now strewn with cars and vans.
The people who lived on the street became more suspicious of one another and jealous of their parking spaces. They hid behind their front windows and watched anxiously until a space appeared and raced out and grabbed it. They drove their cars on their neighbor’s pavements if they had to get out of a tight spot.
There is no happiness on this street anymore, only the roar of angry people and angry automobiles. There is some speculation that if more boats are parked on the street, the city will charge a docking fee. Someone said she wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one morning to find a cruise ship double parked in front of her house. And she didn’t seem to be kidding. The once-promising street-cleaning program was pretty much abandoned for fear of riots over people having to move their cars and find nearby places to park.
And that’s where our story ends. The neighbors here are more desperate than those on Wisteria Lane. Chaos envelops us. The wide street is just about gone. As Joni Mitchell once wrote, "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
