On Avon Court in Halethorpe, there's an unwritten law that says the parking space in front of your home is your spot. But the commuters who flock to the Halethorpe MARC station don't follow that code. They see the absence of no-parking signs as an invitation to leave their cars on the residential street - especially as the 770-space lot at the station fills up every day.
The daily influx of outsiders has led to ugly scenes between residents and commuters, sometimes involving calls to police.
Variations of the problems in Halethorpe are playing out across Maryland as parking lots that serve commuter bus riders, MARC and light rail passengers fill up with commuters, a growing number as many rebel against $4-a-gallon gasoline by switching to transit.
Park-and-ride lots for commuter buses are filling up as far west as Hagerstown, as far south as Calvert County and as far east as Kent Island. Besides Halethorpe, MARC's lots are overflowing in Perryville, Aberdeen, Point of Rocks and West Baltimore.
Even the long-derided light rail system is developing capacity issues at its once-sleepy Cromwell Station in Glen Burnie, the Mass Transit Administration says.
For transit advocates, the full parking lots are a beautiful sight - proof of what they hope will be a long-term shift away from reliance on single-rider vehicles from home to workplace. But for commuters, the crowded lots are frustrating.
"You have to get up really early to get a space," said Joe Kabando, a MARC rider who lives and boards in Aberdeen. When the lot is full, harried commuters sometimes grab whatever spot they can find on the street. "We're still getting tickets, and we still have a lot of problems with parking."
For transit administrators, the crowded lots are a mixed blessing. While they welcome the additional riders, the recent influx has outstripped their ability to add parking capacity.
Jawauna Greene, a spokeswoman for the Mass Transit Administration, said her agency is taking a "comprehensive look" at its parking resources. But adding lots of new parking spaces can't be done quickly or easily.
In some places, such as Halethorpe, the spaces created in large expansion projects have already been overwhelmed by new riders. At others, such as the Mount Washington light rail station, there's no more land available.
Other stations are in town centers, where municipal governments have to answer to residents and businesses who want strict enforcement of parking restrictions.
