Rehoboth Beach parking - a crisis that no app can yet conquer

Early last month, my wife and I happened to be shopping in mid-afternoon at the Walmart in the Rehoboth Mall. 

We, and all the other customers in that cavernous box store, were going about our business when, at exactly 2:18 p.m., our cellphones all rang in unison. We were one of a select group of 225 million Americans (not all in that particular store) to receive the Presidential Alert national emergency test text message.

If, during the process of selecting a ringtone for your cellphone, you ever wondered what the options would sound like if they all rang together, let me tell you that the cacophony of the Presidential Alert reverberating within a Walmart is about as close as one can come to that phenomenon. 

After duly acknowledging the President’s text message, we customers continued our mission of contributing to the growth of the American economy by purchasing everything we could, all of which happened to be made in China. We then exited to the parking lot. 

While not everyone is allowed to use the spaces reserved for guest columnists from the Delaware Wave and the Delaware Coast Press, there nonetheless appeared to be ample parking for all. 

While that’s generally true for stores and restaurants along Route 1, most of which have adjacent parking lots with plenty of spaces, commercial establishments located in our downtown areas operate on a FYOP — Find Your Own Parking — basis. 

Parking, or the lack thereof, has become one of the biggest issues in the region, especially so in downtown Lewes and Rehoboth, where spaces are at a premium.

Unfortunately, the Parkmobile app on your cellphone, or that bag of quarters in your glove compartment, has become little more than a hunting license, the means to pay for a space if you are lucky enough to bag one.

Ad hoc governmental committees have been formed, editorials written, and letters to the editor submitted, all of which explore various aspects of the parking problem and offer possible solutions. 

Among the latter are (1) more parking lots in and around town, Mackenzie “Mac” Adam is a big fan of that one; (2) shuttle vans or jitneys to/from outlying parking sites, a favorite of the Jolly Trolley crowd; and (3) parking garages, ideally built with stealth technology to make them invisible from the sidewalk level, although that could be the cause of some entry problems.

RELATED: Parking overhaul for Rehoboth about making a better experience: officials

MORE: Fox dubbed 'chupacabra' skips line at Grotto Pizza in Rehoboth

As the chair of Rehoboth’s Parking Committee has noted: “The question is how can you create more parking without creating more parking?” Indeed. While it may be hard to get your tires around that query, once you do, its validity is difficult to deny.  

The answer to the question may lie in the palm of your hand, in that there are cellphone apps out there that will find a parking space for you, although it may be distant from your specific destination.

A better approach might be drive to your destination and utter a simple command to your smartphone assistant, something to the effect of: “Alexa, create a parking space here.” (This will work equally well with Siri.)  

However, one needs to use caution in terms of where you make this request, lest you wipe out a fire hydrant, a crosswalk, a bike rack, or, perish the thought, block an entire side of a cross-traffic intersection. 

As intractable, or as in-trafficable, as the parking problem may seem, it should be noted that there are individuals, some people call them “parking change deniers,” who believe the parking problem is not real. 

They maintain that the willingness to walk a short distance would solve it all, and that a little walking is essential if one is to absorb the true ambiance of our downtown communities.  

Possibly true, but invariably when one questions the deniers, one learns that they are the same people who heard and believed stories from their parents about walking five miles to school uphill both ways in the snow.

In any case, the lack of easy downtown parking may help to explain why it was that a copy of "Huckleberry Finn," checked out in 1972, was not placed in the Rehoboth Beach Public Library’s book drop until late last month — 46 years overdue. The motorized borrower simply couldn’t find a parking space until then.      

Mike Berger is a freelance writer and retired university administrator with a home in Lewes. Contact him at edadvice@comcast.net.