Having your car towed and impounded is the a huge hassle but in Philadelphia, your car can suffer something called a “courtesy tow,” where it ends up not in an impound lot, but practically anywhere, and no one seems to keep track of where it goes. It’s a special kind of headache. CBS News tells the story of Jacquie Martin, who took her son to an Eagles game and hasn’t been able to find her car ever since.
The Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) provides courtesy tows as an alternative to impounding an illegally parked car. A common situation where this happens is when someone parks their car legally, but then the area is declared a temporary no-parking zone for construction, an event, or some other reason. Because the car was parked legally to begin with, it gets towed to a nearby legal parking space and left there, rather than impounded. The owner can then get their car from its new parking spot.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. In reality, the PPA often doesn’t keep track of the cars it moves or where it moves them, even though it is supposed to inform police.Â
“The problems usually arise when other departments or private contractors are doing work and use private tow companies to relocate vehicles,” police told CBS News. This leaves owners having to search the streets for their cars themselves, as Martin did. She didn’t even know about courtesy towing until the police told her about it. The only reference to courtesy towing on the PPA website is a brief mention of it in a list of accomplishments in 2018.
It gets worse
This is not a new problem. In 2021, the Philadelphia Citizen told the story of its anonymous Mystery Shopper getting courtesy towed. Police helped find their car two blocks away from where it had been legally parked, now moved to a private parking space with two tickets on the windshield. CBS News reports that Aaron Cashman, whose car was legally parked with a valid parking permit, has been courtesy towed five times to areas outside his valid parking zone, then ticketed. The PPA made him pay the tickets because he couldn’t prove he hadn’t illegally parked the car himself. That’s quite convenient, considering that the PPA could have provided such records itself if it actually bothered keeping them, like it’s supposed to.
“The Daily Show” has even covered Philly’s courtesy parking fiasco. Gary Isaacs was in a similar situation to Cashman, legally parked with a permit, then towed to an illegal spot. His car was then impounded, damaged, and put up for auction before Isaacs found it. He had to pay $1,469 in fines and repairs. Rachel Sclarsky found her car missing less than 12 hours after parking legally. While not quite the fastest we’ve seen a car impounded, it’s up there. In this case, the police were able to tell her where it had been moved. Unfortunately, it had been dropped in a turning lane rather than a parking space, then ticketed, towed, and impounded.
Courtesy parking sounds less like a courtesy and more like legalized extortion. The PPA refused interview requests from every source I could find. The city council passed a resolution in October 2023 to investigate this practice, but it has not held any hearings since then. As unfair as this is, some Philadelphians now seem to simply accept this as part of living in the city. Getting ticketed, towed, and impounded the old-fashioned way seems a whole lot easier. At least that way, you can find your car and have a much better chance of getting it back.
