Philadelphia Parking Authority holding town hall to keep people out of trouble

The Philadelphia Parking Authority is holding an online seminar Thursday night at 6 p.m. that could potentially save parkers a ticket.

The event is on parking permits and is another in a series of virtual town hall meetings the authority has been holding to inform residents and visitors to the city on how to prevent receiving a parking ticket.

Clarena Tolson, Deputy Executive Director of the Parking Authority, said PPA is excited to offer the town hall meetings, to “inform, educate and assist customers in an engaging and user-friendly manner, particularly in an environment where we don’t necessarily want to encourage physical contact.”

The meeting will discuss all the different types of parking permits that are available in Philadelphia, which range from neighborhood parking and day passes to contractor permits, loading zones, hotels, valet parking, and even scooter corrals. This meeting will not cover the disability permit program, which Tolson says will need its own separate town hall in the future.

Tolson said the goal of the meeting is, “to help people avoid tickets, allow them a level of convenience to do what they need to do while they are in the city, and make their overall experience in the city a lot better.”

The town hall is especially important for residents in the 39 zones where permit parking occurs in Philadelphia. Permits are $35 per year for a single-car household and go up to $100 per car if you live in a four-vehicle household with permitted parking. The permits do not transfer between districts, so if your permit is for District 1 you can’t use it to park for free in District 3. Even with a permit, you must comply with parking rules such as no parking, no stopping, and loading zones.

The monthly meetings have been going on since October of 2020 and have a new topic each month, Tolson said.

To sign up for this event, you can go to the Parking Authority’s website.