Traffic Q&A: Parking in center lane illegal, but who really cares?

Question: Related to last week’s traffic column (“You can drive in a center turn lane only so long,” from the Nov. 13 edition), what about the use of the double-left turn lane in commercial areas for delivery truck unloading?

This is done regularly in the Proctor District, Old Town and Sixth Avenue that I am aware of. I don’t know if this is legal or if it is just an accepted solution given the lack of suitable off-street loading stall for these businesses.

I can tell you a semi-trailer loaded with beer or restaurant supplies, tailgate extended and lowered as a delivery driver maneuvers a pallet jack toward a nearby business seems to be a significant obstacle in a two-way left turn lane that ostensibly serves to allow a driver to access a driveway or as a place of refuge when trying to re-enter traffic from a driveway.

William B., Tacoma

Answer: If this is a problem to you, William, a word of advice: don’t ever drive in South Philadelphia, where cops usually shrug at the steady line of cars perpetually parked in the center of South Broad Street, the busy artery road that cuts right through the middle of America’s fifth-largest city.

This is what happens when questionable behavior is quietly tolerated: It takes root, gets regarded as a “tradition” and becomes immovable for decades. (See also: that wall of old gum enabled by civic inaction a few miles north of Tacoma).

A Philly cop told a local magazine the habitual center-lane scofflaw activities has been entrenched at least since the 1940s, and that trying to change it after all this time could provoke “minor revolution.” The Philadelphia Inquirer checked citations data this summer and found it’s rarely ticketed.

Like Philadelphia, Tacoma — and the rest of Washington — have laws on the books to prohibit center-of-the-road parking. So why does it happen?

When it comes to trucks parked in the center lane, any of three Tacoma agencies could swoop in and attempt to ticket the habit into oblivion: the commercial vehicle enforcement department, the parking department and Tacoma police.

We consulted all three to explore this issue, and all three demurred. Police sent us to the enforcement folks. Commercial vehicle enforcement said to check with parking. Parking didn’t return our calls.

An official in a fourth city agency, traffic engineer Josh Diekmann, told us the city has issued 170 tickets in 2015 for blocking traffic — a category that includes many places to put a vehicle that aren’t in the middle of two-way turn lanes. The number of those specifically for parking square in the middle of the turn lane wasn’t readily apparent.

“Parking in a two-way left turn lane is discouraged,” Diekmann wrote in an email, “because it can create hazards for both roadway users and for those loading and unloading vehicles.”

How strongly authorities discourage center-lane parking here through official enforcement will likely play a large role in how much this behavior takes root as population density in Tacoma grows.

If you want to have a voice in that, the city website says the parking advisory group is “looking for new members to participate in decisions/recommendations.” The contact phone number there is 253-591-5437.

Wednesday afternoon, after we began to ask city officials to explain this situation, your correspondent watched a parking enforcement officer downtown get into an involved sidewalk discussion of proper parking with a UPS driver while the big brown truck sat in the middle of a South Pacific Avenue center turn lane, flashers on. The officer’s hands weren’t reaching for his ticket book, at least not immediately.

Whether they ever did is unclear to your correspondent. Our paid-for parking permit’s two-hour allowance had expired five minutes previous. With the enforcement officer only a few yards away, it was time to flee before our own lawbreaking turned costly.

This story was originally published November 21, 2015 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Traffic Q&A: Parking in center lane illegal, but who really cares?."