Court Opinion

ID: 9647993
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:58:28.175546+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:01.559213
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent.
*327The issue raised by this appeal is whether appellee, the Borough of Stroudsburg, properly exercised its police power in establishing residential parking districts that limit the access of nonresidents to on-street parking in designated residential areas, in order to reduce traffic congestion and hazards and to enable the residents of such parking districts to park their vehicles without limitation on the streets near their homes.1 The majority of this Court errs in finding that appellee Borough did properly exercise its police power in this case, and, in fact, overrules the well settled law of this Commonwealth.
It has long been the law of this Commonwealth that municipalities may enact rules and regulations controlling public streets. Livingston v. Wolf, 136 Pa. 519, 20 A. 551 (1890). In doing so, however, municipalities may not grant rights and privileges to a favored few at the expense of the many. Reimer’s Appeal, 100 Pa. 182, 45 A. 373 (1882); see also William Laubach & Sons v. Easton, 347 Pa. 542, 32 A.2d 881 (1943) (municipalities may regulate the use of highways in the interest of the whole public in so far as the regulations are not unreasonable or oppressive). In fact, our courts have consistently held that purely private uses of public highways with no reasonable benefit to the public are not permissible. See, e.g., 46 South 52nd Street Corporation v. Manlin, 398 Pa. 304, 157 A.2d 381 (1960) (newsstand on public sidewalk is private use which can be enjoined by abutting landowner). The municipality may authorize certain uses of public thoroughfares, but only for public services, travel and commerce. Id.
Landowners whose property abuts public streets, roads, and highways retain some rights of ownership in the highway, including a right of access to their property. Breinig v. Allegheny County, 332 Pa. 474, 2 A.2d 842 (1938). The rights of ownership retained are not without limit, however, *328as neither the abutting landowners nor others may restrict the use of the public thoroughfares by the public for transit. This right of transit includes the right to stop as necessary due to the ordinary exigencies of travel. Id.
The Borough of Stroudsburg, in enacting ordinances which provide for the designation of residential parking districts herein, has, by stated purpose, created private parking zones on specified public streets for the sole benefit of the residents who live in homes located on those streets, at the expense of the general commuting public. This is not a proper exercise of the Borough’s police power, in that municipalities may not take for private use that which belongs to the public. Reimer’s Appeal, supra.
The other stated purpose of the ordinances in question herein is to alleviate “hazardous traffic conditions and the overburdening of existing streets and roads.” Borough of Stroudsburg Ordinance No. 636. Where a municipality exercises its police power “the means which it employs must have a real and substantial, relation to the objects sought to be obtained.” Lutz v. Armour, 395 Pa. 576, 579, 151 A.2d 108, 110 (1959) (ordinance forbidding landfill operators from accepting garbage originating outside of township had no substantial relation to goal of regulating garbage disposal areas). The Borough of Stroudsburg is declaring, in effect, that the motor vehicles of nonresidents create hazardous traffic conditions in residential parking districts, if they are allowed to park all day in those districts during business hours, but that the motor vehicles of residents with permits do not create hazardous traffic conditions under the same circumstances. This is a distinction that is both artificial and clearly without merit. The provisions of Ordinances No. 636 and No. 638 of the Borough of Stroudsburg which distinguish between the motor vehicles of residents and those of nonresidents and which are intended to alleviate hazardous traffic conditions do not have a “real and substantial relation to the objects sought to be obtained.”
*329In addition, this Court has held that regulations which do not operate on all alike cannot be justified under the police power. White’s Appeal, 287 Pa. 259, 134 A. 409 (1926). Because the ordinances in question do not extend the same parking privileges to all, and because they penalize some for conduct that others may engage in with impunity, there is no justification for these ordinances under the police power; thus, I would find that they are invalid.
Accordingly, I would reverse the order of the Commonwealth Court which affirmed the order of the Court of Common Pleas of Monroe County.
FLAHERTY, J., joins this dissenting opinion.

. The stated purpose of Ordinance No. 636 of the Borough of Stroudsburg is to alleviate "hazardous traffic conditions, the over-burdening of existing streets and roads, and the inability of residents of certain areas to obtain adequate parking adjacent to or close by their places of residence.” Reproduced Record at 6a.