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Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 4:20 pm - by Matt Campbell. Filed under: Transportation.
Drivers of any hybrid car could park for free at meters in Doylestown under a plan up for discussion tonight. Borough Assistant Manager Phil Ehlinger (avid bike rider) is the one pushing for free meter plan. He hopes it will encourage people to become more environmentally friendly. The Public Safety Committee is scheduled to discuss his plan tonight at 7:00 p.m. If it is approved, it would go to the full Doylestown City Council for consideration.
Ehlinger already knows what most people are thinking when they hear about the plan. Any hybrid?
This 2009 Cadillac Escalade hybrid gets about 20 mpg
The answer is yes, any hybrid. Why? According to this op-ed by Alan Kerr, Ehlinger says it’s more practical from an enforcement point-of-view to draw the line at hybrid/non hybrid.
Environmental advisory council didn’t want to make the parking officers have to determine which small cars get good gas mileage and which don’t; size alone isn’t always an accurate indicator. With hybrids and electrics, which are prominently marked as such, the officers would know immediately if a vehicle qualified for free parking.
The proposed law seems well intentioned, but to have parking meter maids, uh, I mean parking enforcement officers go around looking for a factory installed emblem that says “hybrid” seems alot like someone asking you, if you wouldn’t mind taking their aluminum cans to the store since you’re headed that way.
What do you think? Should more towns do what ever it takes to encourage sustainability? or Should government stick to providing needed services and leave sustainability to advocacy groups?
May 13th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Nothing wrong with encouraging sustainability, but can’t say I like an implementation that treats an Escalade hybrid the same as a Prius.
I get that it’s an easy black-and-white line to draw for enforcement purposes — but what’s the point of having the rule at all if the implementation encourages behavior that contravenes the spirit of the rule?
Perhaps some meterless “hybrid-only” spaces - sized appropriately - would be a better idea. Or maybe Doylestown could invest in encouraging more people to bike around town (bike lanes, parking areas, etc).
May 13th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
@Justin. I like the small “hybrid only” spaces idea.
May 13th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I’m sorry, but this plan is silly - we need to be encouraging people to drive less. Driving less is the only real solution, encouraging people to drive hybrid cars with marginally better gas mileage and extremely hazardous batteries is not a good solution.
Give a tax credit to 1 car families, or to bicycle commuters, heck give a tax credit based on how FEW miles people drive.
Encouraging people to buy expensive cars with difficult to recycle lithium batteries so that they can drive more often to crowded city locations won’t help the environment, won’t help parking in Doylestown and won’t help the city generate revenue for other useful programs.
Ultimately this program wreaks of the smugness that is often displayed by fly by night environmentalists who seem to think that merely by owning a vehicle with the word Hybrid on the side they’re somehow doing the world a huge favor.