Remember two days ago when the Philadelphia Parking Authority said they were going to “soften” enforcement during the Coronavirus pandemic?

It says this on the front page of their website:

CUSTOMER ALERT: In accordance with directives of the Governor and the Mayor, the Bureau of Administrative Adjudication, the Parking Violations Branch and PPA administrative offices will be closed starting March 17th and reopen on Monday, March 30th, 2020. Additionally, the PPA will not be enforcing meters, kiosks, or residential parking time limits during the current COVID-19 public health emergency.

They tweeted that out, too, for confirmation.

So I’m not sure what the hell is going on here, but less than 48 hours later, we had this:

All these cars in Center City got ticketed today pic.twitter.com/9Vs6AMX142 — dhm (@dhm) March 19, 2020

This… doesn’t seem necessary.

Here’s what Executive Director Scott Petri told the Inquirer on Tuesday:

“Our role is to assist in this crisis, to try to manage safety issues and the like, and to try to ensure that folks will have access to their critical needs they have, so in that light, I would ask that we all be considerate of our neighbors, our friends, we try not to park in parking spots all day long,” he said. “Especially pay attention to areas where there are food stores, where people need to get their staples, where they need to get important medical services, etc.”

The cars and trucks in Dan’s photos are not near food stores or important medical services. They do not appear to be blocking fire hydrants or occupying handicap areas. There are kiosks present, which defines most of the parking in the Sansom/Chestnut/Walnut area. Some of those spots have “no parking” restrictions for certain hours of the day, and there are some loading zones as well. That’s the only thing I can think of here that would justify a violation, but if I had to guess, the PPA probably just defaulted to “let’s write a bunch of tickets” instead of giving people some leeway in the middle of a health crisis.