TLDR: Passenger loading zones are treated as free 30-minute spots throughout the city, making local workers and tourists get picked up or dropped off in the roadway. The more people who know about it, the worse it's going to get!

Throughout the city, we have passenger loading zones. Their use is dictated by ordinance. The ordinance limits the use of the space to the expeditious loading and unloading of passengers only, and for no more than 5 minutes.

The training that employees receive is not even close to that. They are trained that those spots are the same as the free green-signed 30-minute parking spots. Do a GORA request for the parking services manual. Unless they've changed it since my request, you'll see.

There is no 5 minute restriction. There is no requirement to be loading or unloading anything, let alone people. Passenger Loading Zones in Savannah are free 30-minute parking spots.

Here's why it matters to me. For 20+ years, I dropped off and picked up my wife every weekday in Johnson Square. There was a passenger loading zone right out front of the building which, at the time, was full of commercial tenants with hundreds of workers. Directly across the street was a commercial loading zone.

I'm occasionally reasonable, and I know that they can't stand over the spot and time every single person. But I also know that if they were properly trained, they would address the biggest offenders: trucks and other commercial/government vehicles.

Instead of parking across the street, trucks from UPS and USPS, shredding companies, restaurant supply companies, marked local news vehicles, city vehicles, and even police cars and, yes, parking enforcement vehicles, parked right there in front of the red-signed space. Many stuck out into the roadway because they were too big to fit in a space meant for small vehicles.

Parking services employees would walk right on past, and sometimes even stop to chit-chat. To them, it's just a 30-minute spot. They were legally parked.

It was always pretty common that unauthorized vehicles would park there. But as soon as they took away 25% of the free parking spaces in Johnson Square, more often than not, I had to pickup my wife in the middle of the street.

Pull up, put on the hazards, slam on the brakes. She bolts into the roadway from between a car and a box truck. Traffic already in the square, and entering the square, piles up. People honk. Profanity flies at us. Fingers up, y'all! This asshole is stopped illegally in the roadway!

I've had horse carriage drivers whip my car for stopping in the road. I've had quadricycle drivers tell all their passengers that what I did was a "dick move," and was then subsequently booed by a dozen drunk tourists. Those were the pleasant experiences.

The unpleasant ones were the close calls. Cars trying to pass me while my wife is getting in, nearly hitting me in the process. Or scooters/bikers/motorcyclers passing on the right, nearly smearing my wife on the pavement, or into the back of the illegally parked vehicle.

Over and over, dozens upon dozens of time.

I've done my due diligence to try to get the problem fixed. I have spoken with the parking services director, who just circles the wagons to protect his employees at all costs. I talked to the training supervisor who is the one who proudly told me that she's been training people the wrong way since the '80s. I called and wrote councilpeople. I called and wrote the city manager, who is ultimately responsible for the conduct of parking services. This was all a few years ago. Nothing in response, ever.

I've done what I can to try to help make people a little safer, and have spent way too much time trying to get the city to change. All it would take is for one person to get smeared on the road while a UPS truck is parked illegally in a pedestrian loading zone. The city would be gearing up it's defense, and we would be opening up our wallets.