Richmond takes on cars on sidewalks
Blocking walkways presents obstacles for residents, but so do parking fines
As he walked on 35th Street in Richmond on a recent morning, Melvin Willis was on the phone with me talking about cars blocking sidewalks.
Willis, a Richmond city councilman, paused our conversation so that he could enter the street to get around a car that blocked his path.
Walking on the sidewalk in Richmond can be like moving through an obstacle course. And for some — like schoolkids, people in mobilized wheelchairs and mothers with strollers — moving into the street to get around a blocked sidewalk can be especially perilous.
Cars are on curbs. Cars are on grass patches in front of houses, their hoods bending bush branches. Car bumpers even hang out of driveways, impeding road traffic.
The blocking of sidewalks by cars isn’t a new problem but it seems to have gotten worse with the housing crisis, as more people share homes.
Regardless of the reasons, parking that obstructs sidewalks is against state law and local ordinances, and the Richmond Police Department recently stepped up efforts to ticket cars found illegally parked on the sidewalk.
According to Lt. Felix Tan of the Richmond Police Department, about 100 tickets have been tucked under wiper blades since Dec. 14. The fine is $43.
For many Richmond residents, $43 is a week of food.
It’s a tough situation — even the police officers handing out tickets realize it.
On Chanslor Avenue, I watched a parking enforcement officer write a ticket. The officer, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, told me he’s aware many people will have trouble paying the fine.
“It kind of puts the people in a bind,” the officer told me. “It’s taxing the lower-end community. I feel for them. At the same time, I have a job to do.”
Tan said the city is trying to protect the elderly and disabled.
“The bottom line is we were trying to get people to stop parking on the sidewalk,” Tan said. “The goal was not to write tickets. The goal was to have them stop parking on sidewalks so that it’s not impeding the flow of foot traffic of the elderly and the ones that have physical disabilities.”
Willis shared a story about pushing his mother in a wheelchair to her doctor’s appointment and entering the road to get around cars obstructing sidewalk access. He said the new enforcement effort is complicated.
“I want to see us enforce making sure that the sidewalks are clear, but at the same time I don’t want to create another hardship for somebody who may be struggling and needed to park their car on the sidewalk because parking, in general, has been an issue for everybody,” he said.
When people return home from work, there’s a nightly carousel to find a parking space because people want to park close to where they live.
Richmond Mayor Tom Butt said he began talking to police several months ago about stepping up enforcement. Butt told me he kept seeing people on motorized wheelchairs and mothers pushing strollers in the street.
“People with wheelchairs should not have to go in the street because someone blocked the sidewalk,” Butt said. “Kids walking to school should not have to go out into the street because someone’s blocking the sidewalk.”
Butt said several people have reached out to him because they were upset they’d been cited.
“If people are inconvenienced by it, that’s just part of life,” he said.
I asked Butt if the tickets were punitive, a penalty for people already struggling to afford to live in Richmond.
“That’s not the intent,” Butt said. “I think that’s a fact that there are places where the problem is exacerbated by multiple people living in a household. If that’s what’s happening in a house, people are just going to have to walk a little bit further to park.
“I don’t care where people park. I just don’t want them parking on the sidewalk.”
“I sidewalks want to are see clear, us enforce but at making the same sure time that I don’t the want to create another hardship for somebody who may be struggling ... ” Richmond City Councilman Melvin Willis