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Citizen complaint of the day: The nerve of some people, yelling at me while I remove their space savers

Two chairs used as space savers on Sutherland Road in Brighton

An irate citizen filed a 311 complaint from Charlestown yesterday:

Was verbally harassed when doing as "the rules state" and removing illegal space savers because the city does shit about them. It's getting to the point where they are getting violent, and guess what not only will I sue them if they touch me but I'll sue you Marty Walsh since you are setting this tone from the top, and perpetuating this culture of entitlement/space saving bullshit/violence.

Walsh, of course, was trying out his latest stand-up routine yesterday when he told Bostonians not to put out space savers, that there was no snow emergency and that all space savers will be collected by trash crews this week.

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Comments

GO HOME... We'll be fine without you.

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I’m just curious. Do you even own a car?

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The better question is if he has a driveway.

This storm should be one where space saving should be allowed. That was an awful lot of snow people had to clear to get to their cars. To say the least, the 48 hour rule should have been invoked.

Of course, Walsh's staff should have been on the ball with the forecasts and declared a snow emergency on Sunday night. But I suppose getting the roads cleared for emergency vehicles to respond to incidents is less important than the space saving thing.

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Space saving should not ever be allowed. Get a driveway if you want to save a space.

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Move back to the suburb your originally from.

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Some us us rational grownups would prefer you did that.

I have a car. I park on the street. I have no problem following the rules.

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Space saving should not ever be allowed.

It's not allowed.

Boston City Council passed a law making the practice illegal in 2014.

I interpret the Mayor's non-enforcement as a raised middle finger toward the rule of law.

16-12.43 Prohibiting the Selling, Leasing, or Reserving of Public Ways.
a. No person or entity other than the City of Boston and any of its departments or designees shall have the authority to sell, lease, reserve or facilitate the reserving of any street, way, highway, road or parkway, or portion thereof, under the City of Boston's control.
b. Any violation of this section shall result in a fine of two hundred and fifty ($250.00) dollars for each violation. Each day that an entity is operating in violation of this section shall constitute a separate violation.

http://library.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/Massachusetts/boston/chapterxviprohibitionspenaltiesandpermit?f=templates$fn=default.htm$3.0$vid=amlegal:boston_ma$anc=JD_16-12.43

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THIS — public roads are not yours to “save”
people here suck

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The reasoning behind space savers is insanely selfish. You shovel out a space, you LEAVE the space, and you expect the rest of the world to treat it as some kind of sacred shrine and not touch it? You leave for however long and no one else gets the use of it in all that time? Listen to yourself.

And before you go there, I know how long it takes to dig out a car. I've never owned a garage or a snowblower. I do more digging to get my car free than anyone parking on a Boston street. I know how much work it takes (hint: it's not nearly as much as the bellyaching suggests). I get to park my car in my space after I dig it out because it's a space that I own. If I'm parking my car in a public space, I'm not entitled to reserve that space for my exclusive use, not for any length of time, not under any conditions. It is NOT YOURS.

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The POINT is some people have to shovel to get their car out. Some people don't shovel and plow out the spot, come home take a clean spot. The person who had to since m shovel has to shovel again!

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The POINT is some people have to shovel to get their car out. Some people don't shovel and plow out the spot, come home take a clean spot. The person who had to since m shovel has to shovel again!

The POINT is that there aren't enough spaces to go around.

So the nurse across the street works night shift. Overnight it snows. She drives home at 8AM. Every space on the block either has a car in it or has a space saver. You're seriously saying that she has no right to park on the street for 48 hours? Seriously?

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Really, maybe 10-15 minutes while your car is warming up? Not a big deal at all.

And yes, that includes cleaning the snow off of the ROOF of the car.

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I shoveled a space . I will use a spacesaver when I leave. Most of the people on my street do the same thing. It happens to be trash day today so using my trash barrels and recycling container works quite well. I will keep them out there for a few more days. This informal system works quite well on my street and in my neighborhood.

Crybabies will cry but that wont stop me and my neighbors from using spacesavers. Bosh indeed.

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You call other people "crybabies" yet you are the one who wouldn't pass first grade since you don't understand the concept of sharing. You are the selfish little brat that takes all the toys for themselves and then whines when the teacher tells you that they don't belong to you.

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I know it's your thing to hate on cars and anyone who uses one, but space saving works perfectly fine in plenty of neighborhoods. You only hear about the bad cases, which admittedly do exist. But come on man, do you even have a dog in this fight? Lazy or absent sidewalk shoveling, sidewalk parking, failure to yield to peds in crosswalks....there are so many other actual motorist bad behaviors to actually care about if you don't have to park a vehicle in the city.

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Anybody with any education knows that hoarding in time of scarcity is sociopathic behavior.

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Do you just say "oh well, what can you do" and move on, or do you start vandalizing the car that's parked there now?

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Or at least wait and stake out the area with a couple of buddies to beat up the offender. What's the point of the code of the street if you're just going to let someone do what they want without retribution? Six inches of snow, baby, we're in Lord of the Flies territory now

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I agree with your main point about space-saving being inherently immoral.

However, I'd like to point out that under some conditions it can be much harder to dig out a car from a street space than a driveway. If there's a big plow berm and it hardens in the cold, and there's nowhere nearby to pile the snow without blocking the street or sidewalk, it can take a really long time.

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You don't have to shovel the space it all. You can leave the car there until street cleaning starts again (yes, it should be year-round).

Oh, you need to drive your car? Then you can shovel it out and leave. That's it. You don't get to use the space any more once you leave, unless it happens to be vacant when you return. You don't get to "save" it and prohibit others from using the same space.

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So, in addition to not approving of the age old practice of space savers after snow storms, you think that street cleaning should be year round. That makes it clear to me that:

1. You’re new to this area
2. You have a driveway or garage

This is the reality that we live with in this insanely overdeveloped and overpopulated neighborhood, thanks to the corruption and greed of city officials WHO DON’T LIVE HERE. If you have a problem with one of the few coping mechanisms available to us, which AGAIN we have been doing this since LONG, LONG before you showed up to domesticate us, do us all a favor and go back to where you came from.

You don’t get to move to a new place and expect the residents who have been living there for 50, 60, 70 years to abandon traditions that have been successful and respected in order to accommodate YOUR special little expectations. THAT is the very definition of “selfish”, Boo Boo.

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But you would be wrong on all counts.

I am a native Bostonian who has been around for more than 50 years.

I live in an apartment, with no driveway or garage. Although I gave up my vehicle within the last five years, I used to live in Southie, drove daily because my vehicle was used with my occupation and did not partake in space saver foolishness.

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How is this any different than my driveway that gets a huge plow ridge in front of it? Last winter it took over an hour to clear a giant, solid ridge from the front of my driveway.

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It's easier when you're not parallel parked in the middle of the ridge, with other cars boxing you in, and nowhere to put the snow without making it worse for them or the sidewalk or the street.

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When you came home last night and all the spaces that were cleared out, including the spot you spent, what, a half hour clearing out, were full, you had no trouble clearing everything the plow pushed over to the side of the road so you would be able to legally park your car? That's very generous of you. I mean, that would have taken at least an hour of back breaking work, all the while someone who did not lift a shovel of snow was parking in the space you cleared out in the morning.

Are you ready to shovel out a third spot this evening, when a car is parked in the spot you shoveled out last evening. With the melting yesterday and subsequent freezing last night, that's going to be like moving ice. Good luck with that. I'm just glad that your dislike of space saving will be keeping you warm.

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You must be very weak, both physically and mentally, if you think shoveling a few inches of snow is such hard work. I'm surprised you have the strength to push down the buttons on a keyboard to comment here.

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But since I am sure you are curious, we are talking about a foot on the ground. When the plows push the snow and compacts it, we are talking 18 inches to 2 feet I think it is also safe to assume that the plow hasn't pushed the snow all the way to the curb (as a pedestrian, that actually makes me happy.) I'd assume the plow leaves the snow 2 feet from the curb. We are talking 2 feet by 2 feet by let's say the length of a parking space is 10 feet. That's 40 cubic feet of ice. At 20 pounds per cubic foot, we are talking moving 800 pounds of snow. You seem to think that it's okay to have one person do that 3 times for their one car.

Now, I don't park my car on the street. I spent a half hour clearing the driveway and cut, but I am done. Were I required to do it again because someone else was too lazy to shovel a spot, I'd be a bit annoyed.

But tell me, how many feet of on street shoveling did you do yesterday? I bet it was a nice round number.

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If fewer people were sloppy lazy apologists for stealing public resources like you and more were non-car owners in a place where cars don't belong, the world would be a much better place!

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If newbies accepted practice, there'd be no conflict.

Kinopio has no skin in this game. Until one has had to clear snow like this from one's car that's been parked on the street, they really don't have any idea as to what this conflict is about.

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I've got news for you, you'd still have plenty of conflict. It's not just "newbies" who think the use of space savers is absurdly selfish and a giant FU to your neighbors. And yes, I shoveled out my car yesterday and drove to work, but I didn't leave a lawn chair behind on the public street because I'm not a sociopath.

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If newbies accepted practice, there'd be no conflict.

Just as easily, if oldbies accepted that the facts on the ground are materially different than they used to be, and so that therefore what used to be accepted practice no longer works and so needs to change, there'd also be no conflict.

Back when there were one tenth as many cars as there are now, it made perfect sense to be courteous and not take the space your neighbor had shoveled out. Because there were plenty of spaces, and everyone could have one. That's just no longer the case, except maybe in WRox, side streets in JP and Roslindale, and leafier, less crowded parts of Dorchester. And the funny thing is, those neighborhoods don't seem to be the ones where there's an issue; the issue seems to come up, not surprisingly, in neighborhoods that used to be like that, but that are a lot more crowded than than they used to be.

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I did plenty of shoveling. I did about 100 feet of the sidewalk on my block, which includes in front of neighbors houses. Good neighbors shovel their neighbors sidewalk. Bad neighbors steal public parking spots and leave trash in the street.

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But it is very different than shoveling that which the plow has moved.

I shovel the cut from the driveway to the street. Save one of those really light storms like what we got Saturday, if you start from the sidewalk, there is no different, until you get to a certain point. Then it becomes heavier and wetter. I swear there are other things making it heavier. In short, it’s the worst fucking thing to do. I’d prefer to clear 200 feet of regular sidewalk snow over 15 feet of street snow.

Before I moved to where I live now, I parked on the street. I never put a chair or whatever out, because it was slightly less dense. We respected each other’s work shoveling out cars. I would never take anyone else’s space, and no one would take mine. That was walking distance from where I am now. That’s being a good neighbor. It’s too bad other parts of Boston are less neighborly, but cones or whatever bring a level of understanding.

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I had a friend from quincy. No one on her street ever used space savers. However when some random person took her space, she would block them in. Somehow this would force them to have to dig around her car to get out. It is not a violent response but it seems even more strange to expect someone to not park in a spot just because they did not dig it out.

Honestly, whatever my neighbors do, I do. My car has AWD, so I have just driven away and marked my effortless non shoveled spot. My thing is to not mark it if I am going to be gone more than an hour. But as I have said any moral judgement in this matter is fake.

Seriously, why do any of care this much?

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I had a friend from quincy. No one on her street ever used space savers. However when some random person took her space, she would block them in. Somehow this would force them to have to dig around her car to get out. It is not a violent response but it seems even more strange to expect someone to not park in a spot just because they did not dig it out.

Honestly, whatever my neighbors do, I do. My car has AWD, so I have just driven away and marked my effortless non shoveled spot. My thing is to not mark it if I am going to be gone more than an hour. But as I have said any moral judgement in this matter is fake.

Seriously, why do any of care this much?

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You mean, on private property with a number on it and assigned to her?

Public street = NEVER 'her" space

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Because it is the internet?

Honestly, my gut is that things work out on this topic much better in the world outside of the Universal Hub than on it. I get my blood pressure up as much as everyone else when Adam posts things and comments start, but offline my obsession is with unshoveled sidewalks. That's a much worse thing than the saver/no saver battles here.

Perhaps if Adam turned his attention to that, we'd have more of a love fest here.

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When you came home last night and all the spaces that were cleared out, including the spot you spent, what, a half hour clearing out, were full, you had no trouble clearing everything the plow pushed over to the side of the road so you would be able to legally park your car?

When I clear out my space and drive off, I fully expect someone else to be in it within 15 minutes. It's a public space on a public street. I can't imagine what level of self-centered entitlement it would take, to think that I had any rights to return to that space.

That's very generous of you. I mean, that would have taken at least an hour of back breaking work, all the while someone who did not lift a shovel of snow was parking in the space you cleared out in the morning.

I have no idea if they lifted a shovel of snow or not. Either they parked on the street last night, which means they shoveled out their car same as I shoveled out mine, or they paid to park in a garage, or maybe they were at work because they work night shift. I don't know and I don't care; it's a public space on a public street.

Are you ready to shovel out a third spot this evening, when a car is parked in the spot you shoveled out last evening?

If by some miracle I happened to find an open space with snow in it, then, yeah, I'd be ready to shovel it out, thanking my lucky stars that I found a space.

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Not everyone lives on Beacon Hill.

Other parts of the city have other issues. The reality is that a lot of cars on Beacon Hill will not be moving for the next week or so, which means they just saved their spaces in other ways.

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You're grasping at straws. What are the "other issues" that you speak of?

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Other parts of Boston don't have the parking issues Beacon Hill has, while parts of Dorchester are food deserts yet have plentiful parking. Since we are talking about parking, it was a reminder to Bob, whose opinions I disagree with by whose thought processes I actually admire, that the parking situation on Beacon Hill is different from the parking situation in Dorchester.

Go shovel out a few spots on your street. It will help with this stress you're having.

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Cause last time this came up, I recall you saying you don't live in this state. Curious how the people who don't have to deal with winter parking are always the most vocal on this issue.

I'll definitely concede that people abuse space savers to a selfish extent, but the binary stance "it's not right EVER" crowd always seems to be the same ones who aren't even playing this silly little game outside arguing about it from their computer.

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Apparently Walsh or his staff don't live or travel on the side streets of Roxbury, JP or Mission Hill where supposedly 2 way streets are barely passable for emergency vehicles on a good day. What's even worse are people who don't shovel the car out at all especially on the street side and narrow the roads even more. Cars should be ticketed if they're not shoveled out within 24 hours whether or not they're moved or not Imo.

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You don't own the public street or public parking.

Note the word PUBLIC.

Move or rent a private parking space if you need to store a giant chunk of personal property.

Signed: Responsible Adult Car Owner

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Oh yeah? Well I'm going to sue god for creating snow in the first place!

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It is only going to get worse with all the development going on around the city. Most of these places with space saver issues are in transit oriented areas and yet there are so many parking problems so the whole "we're developing near public transportation" means nothing and will result in a lot more issues around parking throughout the whole city.

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Space savers tend to exist in low to medium density neighborhoods.

Once you start getting actual apartment buildings, a space saver would be a silly joke. You would never see a space saver on West 73rd Street in NYC. Someone would move it the minute they needed the space.

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In a low density neighborhood, there are enough spaces for everyone so no need to save a space and everyone is happier. Unless there are designated parking spaces for residents of apartment buildings, parking will be a huge issue. There's no way NYC will ever have enough parking for even a fraction of its residents but if a person wants high density like NYC (to avoid parking problems??), then move to NYC. Besides, NYC has much better public transportation if that's what you're looking for.

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Is the issue whether there are enough spaces for everyone, or whether the labor of shoveling a space means it's reserved for you? If the labor is your justification, then even a street with twice as many spaces as regular parkers could lead to space savers.

And you don't have to go to NYC to find a neighborhood where density busts space saving. I doubt you'd see a space saver on a street like this, for example: https://goo.gl/maps/y7qJDaxUDM12

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I love their use of entitlement...guaranteed this entitled person would not have been living in Charlestown back in the day.

I imagine it went something like "I love Charlestown and the vibe. Let's move in and then expect everyone to cater to how we think things should be done now!"

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If it's 2019 in your world, it doesn't really matter what happened "back in the day." Welcome to the present.

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Is that a lemon sno-cone in bottom right...

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No actual enforcement from City Hall will ever happen until there's a murder over a space saver.

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What on earth makes you think there would be any enforcement after a murder? Do they start enforcing traffic laws when pedestrians are killed by drivers?

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Someone was already shot in Dorchester over a space saver. Being pro space saver means you are pro theft and violence, because that is what the space saver "system" is based on.

https://www.necn.com/news/new-england/1-Person-Shot-in-Dorchester-Sectio...

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Is this person trying to park? Are they just removing all the space savers?

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Space savers are illegal and should be scrapped. They are anti social. They are wrong.

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Neighbors helping each other dig out their parking spots is actually a pretty social event. Growing up in the city, unlike many of the people posting on this site, people would take to the streets after a good storm and be outside most of the day, helping each other dig out. In fact, after the spot was dug out, you pretty much knew who parked in which spot because you saw what they were using as a space saver. It was a pretty good tradition that brought neighbors together, unlike now. Neighbors now wait for the property management company to come and shovel the sidewalk outside. Newer residents, instead of grabbing a shovel and checking on the elderly neighbor, walk by with their heads buried in their Facebook. The newcomers who use space savers frequently put it in the spot without ever having taken a shovel to it and expect it will be there when they return. This activity has been taking place for many years and it’s insulting that people move here expecting the unwritten rules to change because they don’t like them. I guess that comes from growing up in Connecticut with a driveway and hired help to clear the snow from it.

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Rules, whether written or unwritten, are made by the community. When the members of the community change, rules may be amended or scrapped, new rules may be implemented. It can be a wild ride. No one member, even a person who "grew up here," has veto rights over the rules. The fact that a rule existed in the past does not mean it is the appropriate rule for the present.

For the sake of social harmony, you are expected to abide by the communally-set rules, whether or not you personally agree with them.

I'm happy to field questions.

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For the sake of the argument, we'll go with all spots being free. If someone needed to park and saw the space and, since all spots are free, moves the cone or whatever to park there, that's one thing. If someone just up and moved the cone or whatever because they think it's a horrible thing even though they have no skin in the parking game, they are being kind of dickish. One can say the saver is being a dick, but they person who is stirring up a fight for no reason is doing the same.

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Someone who throws away a space saver is doing the city a favor. A space saver is trash. They are throwing away someone else's liter. Space saver users should be fined for littering.

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Presumptive victim blaming. Nice. That's good for lots of occasions.

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The one person who will not be involved in the theoretical fight.

There would be one or possibly two victims in this case. The pedestrian who has a heightened sense of public order would not be one of them.

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The only reason there'd be a victim, or a fight, is because the person who put the space saver there to begin with is a violent asshole with no concept of how public spaces work. It doesn't matter what any third party did or didn't do with the trash they left in the spot. To claim anything otherwise is, if not exactly victim blaming, still wrongly shifting blame from the asshole.

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morality is fake. Saying that space saving is immoral is smarmy. The question is what works? Violence is not acceptable. Hoarding does cause harm, so a person really has to question whether saving their own space is worth hurting others. But discussing this over the internet is really the stirring up a fight for our own entertainment.

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morality is fake. Saying that space saving is immoral is smarmy. The question is what works? Violence is not acceptable. Hoarding does cause harm, so a person really has to question whether saving their own space is worth hurting others. But discussing this over the internet is really the stirring up a fight for our own entertainment.

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Is as Mahty stated: when the trash trucks go by, if you've left trash in the street, it goes in the truck.

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And if they can figure out who left it, you get a littering ticket.

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Because in my neighborhood at least, the next time this happens will be the first time.

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15” of snow, no snow emergency but spend half hour shoveling out your car. Some buffoon who doesn’t own a shovel takes your spot because the City “says” you cannot put out a space saver.

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How do you know that the person who took "your spot" didn't shovel out another spot somewhere else?

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This thread shows the absolute entitlement of car owners - whether you believe in space savers or not you all act entitled.

"I shoveled it out...the space is mine."

"I did nothing and the space is mine."

I think it's time for city to start charging for parking on public residential streets - and I'm not talking about .25 an hour. Maybe $10 a day? That seems fair. We can take that money and put it towards T or road infrastructure.

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On the one hand, from the fact that street parking is overconsumed, it's reasonable to infer that it's underpriced.

On the other hand, there may be other social policy objectives, such as trying to keep the city a little bit more livable for economically middle class people, that militate in favor of continuing the current de facto subsidization of street parking. The reality on the ground is that our public transportation infrastructure sucks, and that therefore most people trying to have a reasonable life in the city, except right downtown, sort of need a car. Yeah, I get the idea that we ought to stop subsidizing driving, but the other side of that coin is that it would be nice to not screw ordinary middle class folks in the process. You can't have a sustainable city with just downtown professionals and foreign real estate investors.

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A reasonable first step would be to attach a fee to parking permits, with the cost of the first permit being very reasonable (20-30$) and increasing exponentially with each additional car registered to a household. If you can afford to upkeep 4-5 cars, you can afford to pay 500$ to park the fifth one.

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The only reason it ever escalates to violence is because of yuppie idiots like you who want to come to "our fckn city" and change the traditions which make Boston wicked chahhhming. Now gfy

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i thought you had to be at least 17 years old to get a driving license.

Not 10 with a long disciplinary record.

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The only reason it escalates to violence is because of violent assholes. If you think it's appropriate to attack someone or damage their property because of their use of a public parking space, you're the one with the problem.

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The only reason it ever escalates to violence is because of yuppie idiots like you who want to come to "our fckn city" and change the traditions which make Boston wicked chahhhming. Now gfy

I hope to God you aren't married, because that's exactly the same logic that abusive spouses use to justify beating up their partners.

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I think?

Eventually every argument devolves to the point that sarcasm and earnest position-staking are indistinguishable, but I think the message to which you responded was the former. Gawd, I hope so.

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In six months, you get in your car parked on the road and drive off and don't put out a space saver. When you get back, you park your car in an open space that isn't the same place as before. Do you think there was no car there less than an hour before you got there?

So, where are all these extra cars coming from in the winter? You drive away. When you drive back, the spot where someone else who shoveled out their car and drove away an hour earlier is where you park. How hard is this? It's just like the summer except there's some snow on the sidewalks.

Unless you park on a street where half the street is normally empty, then this isn't an issue. There's a finite number of people who drove away from your street and returned at any given time. It doesn't have to do with snow.

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Unless you park on a street where half the street is normally empty,

This is actually one argument for savers working well. I've lived in a few neighborhoods where there was never any shortage of spots available for anyone willing to pick up a shovel and dig one out. People saved the spots they dug for a couple days and there were no issues.

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It does actually have to do with snow: specifically, the snow between cars that doesn't get shoveled out.
Go check out the "car condos" of the South End: in a snowy winter, without a complete melt between storms, there's an increasingly large amount of snow between cars that leads to fewer cars being able to park. It doesn't take much to do this.

Also, students are gone, and summer is when many people take vacation. The difference is noticeable everywhere in the transportation system, not just parking. It's not a completely radical difference, but it's there.

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