The town council's public safety committee voted against allowing hybrid vehicles to park for free.
Christina Kristofic -
The Bucks County Courier Times - May 14, 2009
While this would be nice for hybrid drivers, it is time to treat them as "normal" cars. --Ed.
There will be no free parking in Doylestown for "green" vehicles.
Doylestown Council's public safety committee unanimously voted Wednesday to reject a proposal to allow hybrid and electric vehicles to park in borough lots and at borough meters for free.
Their vote was met with applause from the 15 business owners and residents who attended the meeting.
The free parking program was proposed by Assistant Borough Manager Phil Ehlinger in an April 23 memo to council. He suggested allowing "green" vehicles to park for free as long as their owners followed the borough's other parking regulations. Ehlinger suggested the program as a way to encourage people to buy new, environmentally-friendly vehicles. The borough's environmental advisory council endorsed the proposal.
Councilman Don Berk said he thought that allowing "green" vehicles to park for free would be making a statement that Doylestown is an environmentally friendly community.
"There's already a statement about that," Councilman John Buckman said.
Buckman said he didn't see how the program would benefit the general public.
Councilwoman Joan Doyle said she thought the proposed program was discriminatory against motorists who did not want or could not afford "green" vehicles.
"The Cadillac Escalade hybrid gets 20 mpg," she said. "To me, this is the height of inane-ness."
Doyle said she didn't want the borough's parking enforcement officers "wasting time peering at the back of a car" to search for the...
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