WILMINGTON, DE – A new video series focused on trying to answer questions about parking rules in Wilmington launched today on a variety of social media platforms.
Ken Grant, advocate for parking reform, says the video series is designed to help educate the public and engage the city in a conversation about the need for a comprehensive review of the system that has been cobbled together over the past several decades.
“We all suffer from a cognitive bias that assumes the system works, and one would certainly hope that something as simple as parking rules should work, but Wilmington’s rules have been changed multiple times without evidence of any consistent messaging to drivers,” said Grant. “The first episode is a perfect example of those kinds of mixed messages between a yellow curb which normally indicates no parking, a sign indicating someone could park for an hour, and a kiosk – the only method to pay for parking in that space – giving the driver a four-hour time limit.”
Grant said this episode was inspired by a case in J.P. Court last July.
“The last parking ticket appeal the city of Wilmington allowed to go to J.P. Court involved a driver ticketed for parking their front wheels beside a yellow curb on the 200 block of Tatnall street and the city attorney kept saying, ‘everyone knows you can’t park at a yellow curb’ – but it looks like the city has been allowing drivers to park at a block’s worth of yellow curb for a few years now, which could be confusing enough, but you add in mixed messages from the sign and the kiosk and you’ve got a situation that no one can seem to agree on,” said Grant.
Grant reached out to members of the Executive and Legislative branches of Wilmington’s city government to get clarification about the parking rules for 10th street a week ago but has not received a response to that query. An attempt to get an answer from the city’s new 311 Information system failed to produce an answer as well.
The first episode of “Asking Pedestrians About Parking in Wilmington” is available here
Episode 2 was released on April 17th with a focus on unique parking restrictions on the Riverfront. Available here
