Mt. Lebanon continues to pursue crackdown on overnight parking
Mt. Lebanon officials are continuing efforts to avoid the prevalence of overnight street parking in the municipality.
An amended parking ordinance is expected to be introduced at the April 10 meeting of the Mt. Lebanon Commission, after which a public hearing will be conducted, probably on May 8, prior to a vote.
The updated ordinance includes a provision by which residents can make three requests per license plate per year for exceptions to the municipality’s on-street parking ban from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. Further requests to address extenuating circumstances would be made to the municipal manager.
Commissioners have addressed the topic at several of their discussion sessions, with the goal of promoting traffic safety by limiting the number of vehicles on roads.
At the Feb. 13 session, Commissioner Craig Grella reported the findings of research on six years’ worth of overnight parking requests, which residents can make by telephone or online.
“When we look at these numbers and we look at the frequency with which these requests are coming in, I do believe there’s abuse of the system.” – Commissioner Craig Grella
“There was a significant increase in overnight parking requests, I believe, when we instituted the online form,” he said, placing the overall number at about 200,000 since 2011.
He and police Chief Aaron Lauth looked at from which parts of the municipality the bulk of the requests have emanated, and they ascertained that addresses on 10 streets account for some 30 percent of them: Shady Drive East, Academy Avenue, Kenmont Avenue, Maybrick Avenue, Mt. Lebanon Boulevard, McCully Street, Roselawn Avenue, Baywood Avenue, Pennsylvania Boulevard and Wisteria Avenue.
“Of those streets, the vast majority are coming from addresses that are multi-unit or apartments, and it’s a situation where it’s the same address that is pretty much requesting,” Grella said. “In some cases, we had individual addresses requesting multiple thousands. In some cases, we had addresses requesting more than there are nights in that time period. So they’re requesting for multiple license plates.”
The intent of fielding requests is to accommodate residents who face emergencies and hardships, but the reasons filed haven’t all qualified as such.
“More than a thousand people were getting up too early. So that was the reason they needed overnight parking,” Grella reported. “We had a not insignificant amount of ‘my car won’t fit in the driveway’ requests.”
A certain situation especially raised some eyebrows.
“From one address on Kenmont, this is the No. 10 excuse: The roommate’s girlfriend was staying overnight, which was actually verbatim the same excuse this gentleman used 793 times,” Grella said. “When we look at these numbers and we look at the frequency with which these requests are coming in, I do believe there’s abuse of the system.”
The municipality is investing in software to help facilitate the request process and to strengthen enforcement. With regard to the latter, Lauth said it would be most effective if employed in a dependable manner.
“If we start out on a parking enforcement vehicle that’s specifically dedicated to doing nothing but parking enforcement, it’s probably going to be more consistently applied,” he told commissioners at their March 12 discussion session.
Officials also have discussed scheduling personnel accordingly.
“We’ve suggested in the past, could that look like a 3 a.m.-to-11 a.m. shift, where they’re able to catch the overnight parking enforcement and then start doing their time parking enforcement in the morning?” Lauth said. “If we arrange the shift in such a way, they could affect multiple ordinances and restrictions that we have, related to parking.”