Pittsburgh City Council voted Tuesday to strip a loophole out of city code that has let drivers legally park on sidewalks for years simply by claiming they were protecting the safety of a person or vehicle. The change clears the way for stricter ticketing citywide, including in steep, narrow neighborhoods like the South Side Slopes, where residents have long treated sidewalk parking as an unofficial necessity.
District 1 Councilmember Bobby Wilson sponsored the measure, which cleared committee last Wednesday and received final council approval on Tuesday, according to Informup. As CBS News Pittsburgh reported, the new legislation enables more enforcement against drivers parking on city sidewalks, with reporter Jessica Riley examining how the change could reshape parking habits specifically in the South Side Slopes.
State Law Already Banned It, But Enforcement Was Toothless
Pennsylvania traffic law never actually allowed sidewalk parking in the first place. Title 75, Section 3353 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes prohibits stopping, standing, or parking any vehicle on a sidewalk anywhere in the Commonwealth, and a 2013 state Superior Court ruling in Molina v. American Patriot Ambulance Service found that parking on a sidewalk amounts to per se negligence if a pedestrian is hurt while forced around the obstruction, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. City code, however, had carved out its own exception that undercut the state ban.
That exception is what Wilson's bill removes. The old municipal language permitted parking in otherwise prohibited spots, including sidewalks and bike lanes, if a driver did so for "the safety of a person or vehicle," and Wilson has said that wording was repeatedly used in court to get citations dismissed, per Informup's reporting. Municipal judges were often reluctant to uphold tickets once a driver invoked that safety justification, the outlet notes.
South Side Slopes Drivers Say Mirrors, Not Tickets, Are the Real Threat
The financial penalty for the violation itself is modest: parking on a city sidewalk carries a $45 fine, the Pittsburgh Parking Authority told WPXI. But residents in steep, narrow neighborhoods like South Side Slopes told the station that they park on sidewalks specifically to avoid having their side mirrors clipped or their vehicles side-swiped when parked fully in the street.
That tension isn't lost on council members either. During deliberations last Wednesday, Beechview Councilmember Anthony Coghill noted that while sidewalk parking blocks pedestrians, cars parked entirely in the street on narrow hillside roads can prevent fire engines and ambulances from getting through, per the same Informup account of the meeting. Many of Pittsburgh's older hillside neighborhoods were built well before modern car widths were a consideration, according to that reporting.
Advocates Point to Wheelchairs, Strollers and Crumbling Pavement
Pedestrian advocacy group BikePGH has been pushing for exactly this kind of change through its "Protect Pedestrians" campaign, which argues that sidewalk parking forces wheelchair users and parents with strollers into traffic while accelerating pavement deterioration, according to BikePGH. That deterioration eventually becomes a homeowner's problem, too.
Under Section 417.02 of the Pittsburgh Code of Ordinances, property owners whose land abuts a sidewalk bear full legal and financial responsibility for maintaining, repairing and replacing damaged pavement, per eCode360. That means the sidewalk slabs cracked by heavy vehicles are, in most cases, the abutting property owner's bill to pay, and they need a city permit to fix them.
Two Agencies, Two Kinds of Tickets
Enforcement of the new rule will fall to two different city entities with separate processes. The Public Parking Authority of Pittsburgh issues administrative "tickets" for routine violations like meter and sidewalk infractions, while the Bureau of Police issues judicial "citations" for more egregious obstructions, according to the Public Parking Authority of Pittsburgh.
Exactly how strictly officers and parking enforcement will apply the new rule on the city's narrowest hillside streets remains an open question. Whether South Side Slopes drivers get any practical leeway, or face the same $45 tickets as everyone else, is likely to become clear only once enforcement actually begins.
