Residential parking pilot program begins on Phillips Avenue

Parking on Phillips Avenue; image courtesy of City of Knoxville

KNOXVILLE - A first-of-its-kind residential neighborhood parking pilot program is underway along a three-block section of a South Knoxville street.

Residents in the 700, 800 and 900 blocks of Phillips Avenue – between Barber and Empire streets – are finding that patrons of nearby businesses, especially at night, have used almost all on-street parking spaces, sometimes blocking alleys and driveways.

The pilot program is simple: Residents have begun applying for tags to be hung from the rear-view mirrors of their cars. Signs were posted by the City, identifying the Phillips Avenue parking spaces as reserved for vehicles displaying the tags.

 

Eighty-five percent of the households in the pilot program area have already applied for the tags, some of which were mailed last week. Residents who want a tag and have not yet applied can still do so. Contact Parking Systems Manager Mark Elliott at melliott@knoxvilletn.gov.

Image courtesy of City of Knoxville

“There’s been a lot of recent investment in the South Waterfront commercial district, and unfortunately, that’s caused some growing pains,” said Rick Emmett, the City’s Downtown Coordinator, who also serves as a liaison between South Waterfront stakeholders.

“The residents asked for the City’s help with parking issues, so City Engineering studied possible solutions and worked with the neighborhood to come up with this pilot program. We intend to monitor the situation and see if reserving some on-street parking spaces for Phillips Avenue residents will remedy the problem, at least for the residents.”

 

Parking is limited in the area, Emmett said, but there are additional spaces available for patrons of nearby businesses that are slightly less convenient and often underused. Shared parking may be another part of the solution, where daytime businesses could make their parking available to neighboring businesses that are open at night, or vice versa.

Published January 12, 2021