Dusk to dawn parking restrictions: why so hard to enforce?

I’ve seen some creative attempts to manage and control on-street parking, most of which don’t seem to work as intended, precisely because they’re creative.  Regulating how people use the margins in a public right-of-way doesn’t really leave much room for creativity, because, when it comes to conveying that law to the lowest common denominator, creativity usually only elicits confusion.  And I think that’s precisely what happened here, at a fairly nondescript commercial cluster based right off an interstate exit ramp. No parking from dusk to dawn.

Seems simple enough.  The syntax of the command isn’t really ambiguous.  The problem, of course, is the time frames.  What constitutes “dusk” and “dawn”?   It obviously changes throughout the year, which isn’t convincing, because, aside from lack of daylight, no other persuasive reason justifies prohibiting vehicles from parking here at 6:00pm in January while permitting it during that same time in July.  Perhaps daylight visibility is enough of an argument.  But is it?

Subjective interpretation also poses a problem; the definition for “dusk to dawn” varies from one person to the next.  I personally thought of twilight as that brief period right before the last bit of daylight fades, a time later than dusk, which can begin as soon as the sun begins to sink below the horizon and can linger for quite some time—maybe even an hour or two.  (Even longer in the latitudes closer to the two poles.)  I have no doubt that, if one were to ask ten random people their definition of dusk, no two of the ten responses would be the exact same, even if most (or all) share common features.  In the eyes of enforcing a law, a general common understanding of dusk to dawn isn’t good enough.  For example, are the two words synonymous with “sunrise” and “sunset”?

Well, no. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) maintains definitions that at least allow for an authoritative, fixed source, which it would behoove lawmakers to observe.  From NIST’s determination, an evening begins with sunset, when the last of the sun creeps below the horizon.  It ends with dusk (when the sun is 6° below the horizon line), with twilight comprising the intervening period.  And daybreak begins with dawn (6° below the horizon once again), ends with sunrise (when the first part of the sun becomes visible); the period between this bookends is once again twilight.  But how many people know this?  And how fair is it for law enforcement to flag people for violating what might be a good-faith effort to remove their vehicles in time?

Too many paragraphs ending in questions!  The bigger consideration, though, is probably less astronomical or meteorological and more sociological.  The road with these parking restrictions rests within a vehicle-friendly commercial node right off of one of the busy interstate highways in the US, at Exit 77A on Interstate 95, several miles northeast of Baltimore but still firmly within the metro.  The area is vaguely called “Edgewood”, but its identity isn’t terribly powerful besides the interstate exit, the nearest MARC Train regional rail stop, a smattering of businesses, and a military installation (Aberdeen Proving Ground – Edgewood Area).  Edgewood lacks a visible town center; neighboring communities of Bel Air and Aberdeen have a much stronger identity.

Here at exit 77A, motorists encounter the predictable array of services in an exurban area: hotels, gas stations, restaurants (many chains, many drive-thrus), and, most importantly for the purposes of this article, businesses with a heavy dependence on warehousing and logistics, which capitalize on the quick and easy access to I-95 through a busy cloverleaf interchange.  Emmorton Park Road, to which the dusk to dawn restrictions apply, is half of a minor loop just off the highway (Maryland State Road 24), which provides access to a few restaurants, a Holiday Inn, Hampton Inn, Red Roof Inn, and that smattering of light industrial businesses that no doubt depend on I-95 for both distribution and to lure customers who might travel large distances to seek their services.  Here’s what the road looks like in daylight.  It’s obviously broad enough to support on-street parking, and, aside from the hotels, most of these businesses aren’t open at night, during what might constitute a “third shift” for higher intensity industrial and warehousing.  It’s pretty quiet from dusk to dawn.  Both Edgewood and Exit 77A comprise an nondescript, unremarkable area with a medium level of development nearby.  They aren’t as busy as an exit ramp leading to a mall or office park, but much more active than the rural exits about 20 miles further north on I-95, which are likely to have little more than gas station or two.  So why the dusk to dawn restrictions?  

A none-too-surprising answer is that truck stops are a major node for human trafficking and sex trafficking in particular.  Far more popular than government run rest stops because of the low likelihood of law enforcement, truck stops offer a big clientele base in an otherwise remote or obscure location—two features that make it much more difficult for the kidnapped individual to escape the situation.  Activist organizations such as Truckers Against Trafficking seek to mobilize practitioners in the logistics industry to monitor and report suspicious activity, thereby doing their part to alleviate the reputation truck stops have acquired for lascivious behavior.   TAT Certification trains participating truckers and trucking companies so that they have both the knowledge and sworn duty to report incidents.

Exit 77A isn’t a truck stop, and its dusk to dawn restrictions only reinforce this.  Nor is it a publicly owned rest stop.  But it shares features of both: it clearly hosts a variety of businesses that dependent on logistics and trucking, and, with the cluster of hotels and restaurants within walking distance, it offers many—or even more—of the amenities one typically expects at rest stops.  With land ownership and tenure spread across a variety of businesses, this exit in Edgewood is rife with conditions that promote diffusion of responsibility: unlike more rural interstate exits, it offers a variety of uses in approximately the same land area needed for a truck stop, but no specific company caters primarily or exclusively to truckers.  So many entities own small fragments of land that it reduces the odds that one business will feel impelled to notify another if business #1 witnesses a crime taking place on business #2’s property.  (It doesn’t help that the owners of these properties are likely far removed from the operations here at Edgewood.)  If it weren’t for the high density of people lurking around the area in a given night, it might be ground zero for kidnapping individuals to exploit within a trafficking ring. Or it might be ground zero because so many people are around with no stake in the matter; crime takes place while hidden in plain view.  All the better that Harford County Sheriff, which enforces law in unincorporated Edgewood, restricts overnight parking along this road…from dusk to dawn.

But does the sheriff restrict parking?  My brief visit at around 9:30pm in January (clearly well after dusk) doesn’t suggest much evidence of enforcement.

It was amazing the variety of vehicles I found parked here from dusk to dawn: tractor trailers, unhitched semis, RVs, dealership vehicles.  Since the readers’ eyebrows might raise wondering what I was doing around here, I’ll confess I was staying at one of the Exit 77A hotels for work at a nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground.  After a long day, I wanted to get a little exercise on a comfortable winter night, so I walked the full length of the loop consisting of Emmorton Park Road on the north side and Columbia Park Road on the south, as seen in the map below.

I counted at least a dozen vehicles violating the dusk to dawn restriction.  Much to my momentary alarm, I even saw a young man lying bundled up in the grass near one of the logistics-oriented businesses, awake but seemingly preparing to sleep.  Though I didn’t feel particularly unsafe, it is likely that anyone overseeing illicit activity would make an effort to be as clandestine as possible.  And the large presence of people ignoring the restrictive signage suggests that Exit 77a has the reputation of going unenforced—of being a quasi-lawless area, tolerating motorists who pull off the road to rest without having to pay for a hotel, truck stop, or RV park.

In short, the dusk to dawn signage doesn’t work—potentially due exclusively to a lack of enforcement, but also potentially due to the underlying ambiguity that comes with such an offhand reference to time.  Most urban parking restrictions do list fixed times (e.g., “NO PARKING FROM 10PM to 5PM”) which would at least offer clarity for those worried about breaking the law.  With a halfhearted attempt at crafting a nighttime restriction the obvious response from the public is equally lackadaisical.  And the halfhearted language in this restriction may hint that, even amidst the warning signs, Exit 77A really isn’t a criminal hotbed. It it were, the law enforcement entities would have crafted time restrictions that are clearer. bOne can only hope that the majority of dusk to dawn activity at Exit 77A is weary travelers seeking a cheap spot to pull over, hunker down in their vehicle, and saw some logs.