South Philly parking solutions exist. What’s missing is the political will to implement them.

It’s never a good thing when a South Philly parking dispute goes viral. But that’s what happened when an argument between a local bakery and one of its neighbors boiled over on social media.

Like many of the businesses in the Italian Market, Sarcone’s Bakery, near Ninth and Catharine Streets, has been around for more than 100 years. Its loaves have been turned into countless hoagies and cheesesteaks over the decades, becoming part of an elite club of well-known producers of the classic Philadelphia-style rolls, alongside Amoroso’s and Liscio’s.

Sarcone’s Italian Market shop makes use of a city-approved loading zone along Ninth Street. Meant to help send and receive commercial deliveries, the zones come with a 15-minute parking limit, just enough time for the work at hand. In practice, however, these spots sometimes function as personal parking spaces.

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This kind of ad hoc suspension of the usual rules is not uncommon in Philadelphia. Whether via a handshake agreement, an unspoken discretionary choice, or a lack of resources, many businesses and individuals in the city benefit from a similar gap in enforcement. The most prominent example perhaps being the median parking that occurs along South Broad Street.

That was the case with Sarcone’s, which, according to social media posts, had rarely been ticketed before for abusing the loading zone time limit — a situation that changed after a neighbor complained.

Faced with a change in enforcement approach, Sarcone’s owners lashed out. In since-deleted social media posts, they gave out the address of the neighbor they blamed for their parking tickets and said she “needs to learn a lesson.” The situation quickly became contentious. Bigoted statements, complaints about gentrifying outsiders, and other vitriol followed from supporters.

Sadly, violence and hints of violence over parking spots are far from unprecedented in South Philadelphia. Threats have been made. Tires have been slashed. People have been shot.

This incident is just another reminder that the city’s refusal to implement proven parking reforms has serious consequences.

Competition over parking space is inevitable in South Philly. When the area’s homes and commercial corridors were built and its streets laid out eons ago, widespread ownership of personal vehicles was not something everyone anticipated. Residents worked and worshiped within walking distance of their homes and local stores met all their regular needs. For specialized products, Center City was just a short trolley trip away.

Of course, many still live this way. Depending on zip code, South Philly is doing its part to fight both climate change and rush hour gridlock: Between a quarter and a third of households there don’t own a vehicle. But an influx of wealthier residents (who own more cars per capita) has led to more Philadelphia families owning cars today than even a decade ago.

Not only are there more cars, these cars are also bigger than before, which means that fewer cars than in years past can typically fill up the available spaces on a given block. The result has been not only an upswing in complaints about parking availability but also an increase in hazardous and illegal parking. For some motorists, sidewalks and crosswalks have become fair game.

If Philadelphia wants to move on from the parking chaos that so often drives conflict and undermines our city’s most distinctive attributes — such as its walkability and its green space — it must embrace modern parking management solutions. We already know what to do.

Over the years, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission has proposed reforming the city’s permit parking system to address South Philadelphia’s parking pandemonium.

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Disconcertingly, city officials often have pushed in the opposite direction. Rather than making it easier to establish residential permit parking districts, as recommended by urban planning experts, City Council made it more difficult. Instead of initiating permit parking through a city-led process based on need, neighbors are forced to circulate petitions themselves, which can be contentious. On other reforms, such as capping the number of permits, there’s been little movement.

Of course, it wouldn’t be politically easy to fix parking in South Philly. This is the same place where neighbors reportedly stoned Mayor Richardson Dilworth in 1961, after he suggested charging $50 for permits (adjusting for inflation, that’s about $500 today).

Still, it needs to be done. While the current system does a good job of insulating elected officials from complaints and can empower individual streets to handle their parking woes, it isn’t enough to end the constant conflict over parking. It isn’t flexible enough to handle the needs of neighborhood businesses and essential workers such as teachers and drives neighborhood opposition to street safety infrastructure and new residential development.

Beyond allowing city staff to initiate need-based expansion of permitted streets, limiting the number of parking permits, and increasing their cost, experts also propose eliminating or reducing permit eligibility for residents who have garages. City Council should step up and implement some of these effective measures.

Any change might not free up space immediately, but over time, it will mean fewer rocks — or insults, or punches, or troubling social media posts — thrown around South Philly over a parking spot.