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When Ee Durbin learned about the Philadelphia Parking Authority’s mobility access violation reporting form, they wondered how they could make it even easier for Philadelphians to report an issue that plagues the city’s streets — what Durbin referred to as “the way that people choose to put their vehicles at a standstill.”
Durbin is the technical lead for the volunteer group Philly Bike Action, and on June 26, the group released Laser Vision, a digital tool that streamlines the mobility obstruction reporting process.
Instead of manually typing in the make and model of the violating vehicle, the location of the offense and other requested information to complete the PPA form, users simply snap a picture of the violation on Laser Vision — a car blocking a bike lane or parked on a sidewalk, for example — and the software reads the details of the image to autofill the form, offers a chance for corrections if necessary and submits it.
Durbin said one user told them they’ve gotten it down to a 15-second process.
Ee Durbin, tech lead for Philly Bike Action, shows off Laser Vision, a digital tool to easily report mobility access violations. (Gabriel Donahue/WHYY)
The concept is similar to Bike Lane Uprising, an app that creates a national database of bike lane violations. But Durbin considers Laser Vision more effective because it doesn’t just collect data “that theoretically could be used for advocacy in the future,” but immediately sends it to the agency that has the power to correct the issues.
When a violation is reported between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., PPA’s patrolling hours, parking enforcement officers should report to the location to ticket the offender, according to Martin O’Rourke, a spokesperson for the authority. The form’s webpage notes that reports “may not result in immediate enforcement action.”
Additionally, O’Rourke said that if violations are frequently reported on “certain blocks or areas, we will inform our ticketing staff to make these areas a priority.”
Durbin told WHYY News that the group doesn’t just want increased enforcement of parking rules.; Instead, the group advocates overall for protected bike lanes so that drivers aren’t physically able to access the same road space as cyclists.
On July Fourth, 27 violations had been reported through Laser Vision by about 4 p.m. The day before saw 95 reports. And in its roughly two weeks of usage — about a week of beta testing occurred before its launch — more than 1,200 mobility access violations have been submitted to PPA. That is nearly a third of the number of total reports PPA received in 2023 across all violations, according to O’Rourke. Though bike lane obstructions are the most common submission by Laser Vision users, that category was only recently added to the form.