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Fenway residents fed up with clowns who park in resident-only spots, but they should maybe be more careful
By adamg on Tue, 03/21/2017 - 10:40pm
Sasha found this on her car - which was parked very definitely in a non-resident spot near the Whole Foods and BSO.
Seriously, Fenway residents?!
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Comments
You live in the Fenway?!?
You live in the Fenway?!? They will be killing a lot of trees come baseball season!
huh?
whatchya talking about?
If people are putting Bozo
If people are putting Bozo flyers on cars parked in non-resident spots in March, I imagine there will be loads of flyers when parking gets tougher during Sox season.
I don't have much sympathy
I don't have much sympathy for the entitled visitors to the area.
The resident spaces are being reduced significantly every year, and it really puts stress on those of us who live here. If we lose our ability to drive to our jobs, for those of us whose jobs are not T accessible, we lose our ability to stay in our homes. I'm a thirty year homeowner being put at risk just so Berklee and the other nonprofits can have some easy parking. It sucks.
"I don't have much sympathy
"I don't have much sympathy for the entitled visitors to the area"
So visitors are entitled for wanting to store their private property on the public street on occasion, but residents who want to store their private property on public property year round, for free, are not entitled? Sounds like both groups are entitled. If residents actually had to pay a fair cost to use public space I'd have a bit more sympathy.
And I have even less sympathy for
the entitled residents of the area who believe they can reserve parking spaces on PUBLIC streets for their own use through a permit only program.
nope.
residents first. visitors, suburbanites second.
and if they are sports fans....then they are last.
marty step up and fix this.
Guess what
It's NOT the visitors who are the entitled ones here. It's the people who don't understand the concept of PUBLIC streets and PUBLIC parking on those streets, and insist on selfishly hogging those spaces for themselves through the guise of the "resident parking permit' program.
As for losing the ability to stay in your homes, nobody forced you to buy a car. And nobody is forcing you to park that car on a PUBLIC street.
THIS
There are choices and trade offs in life. You don't get to demand that the city subsidize your lifestyle when said lifestyle is damaging to the quality of life of the community.
Want a car in the city? Pay for a parking spot for it or reevaluate your living arrangements.
That's life as a grown up!
yep.
and if you are a suburbanite that wants to drive into my city...you pay even more!
I can't believe I'm agreeing with the Southie Yupster
It one of the thing that unites Bostonians against suburbanites. Heck, I'd have to walk a half a mile just to get to Roslindale resident parking, but dammit I'm behind it 98%. The city's just trying to make it so that its own residents can find a place to park. Not even by their residence, just in the neighborhood.
And it's not like there's not parking available for the surburbanites all over Boston. If you don't want to pay to park downtown or in the Back Bay, take the T (which most Boston residents do anyway.)
Huh? What alternate universe
Huh? What alternate universe is this where resident parking spaces are being removed?
I've never seen ANY resident space in the city of Boston get changed to open it up to nonresidents. On the other hand, more and more meters are becoming permit-only at night, and more outer neighborhoods are getting permit rules in areas that have managed just fine with unrestricted parking since cars were invented.
Do the people who advocate for these rules ever stop to think about the needs of the nonresidents who are being barred? Or do they only care about getting what they want, and screw everyone else?
Consider this: The city has a web page describing the process to request resident parking rules in your neighborhood. But you can google all day and you'll never find the page describing how to remove resident parking rules.
Becomes unlivable
I live on a street near a T station. We slowly became an auxiliary parking lot for the T. At first, I wanted to support T ridership however I could. But eventually, cars crammed in so tight that one day I could not get out of my driveway. That's when I became a supporter of my street's decision to go for resident-only parking.
A car with a resident sticker
A car with a resident sticker can block a driveway just as easily as a car without one. Blocking a driveway is already against the rules.
If you have a driveway, you don't need the street parking.
Fenway residents do not own
Fenway residents do not own public parking spaces, public parking spaces are free for all.
The city of Boston should abolish resident parking all together. As a city of Boston resident I think resident parking only is selfish, , how can neighborhood businesses thrive with resident only parking , the realization here is that outside visitors should be welcomed into a Boston neighborhood not driven out because of limited parking, a neighborhood should be inviting.
What if a Brighton resident wants to drive to a Jamaica Plain diner and enjoy a breakfast meal but patron is unable to park because he or she is not a resident of that neighborhood .City should come up with alternative plans .
Alternative Plan
Take the T.
It sucks,
in so many ways.
From Brighton to JP? That
From Brighton to JP? That sounds fun.
When I lived in Brighton I
When I lived in Brighton I would sometimes take the 51 bus from Cleveland Circle to Forest Hills. It doesn't run super-frequently, but it's a pretty quick route.
It is if you like buses!
Loosely speaking, its the 65 to the 66 to the 39 or 42.
That written, how frequent a trip is that? Not for you, but for the region? We can sit here and rattle off all of our peculiar source/destination pairs. As more folks ride the T for the more common s/d pairs, we'll both (a) have less car ownership and therefore less pressure on parking, and (b) have more transportation options as service expands to accommodate the increase in passengers. Virtuous cycle.
Arguing against good aggregate public policy with an edge case anecdote isn't helpful.
You just countered your own
You just countered your own argument though by pointing out the trip involves 3 different bus routes. Imagine trying to do that on a weekend, when service is dreadfully infrequent. It'd probably take you 2 hours!
Yes, we should be encouraging people to take public transit as much as possible. I'm a huge advocate of it, and until last night never even owned a car. But sometimes, for some people, going some places, public transit is just not practical. No matter how much we improve the T it will still make sense to drive sometimes.
And those people
Should live somewhere that there is a place for their car, not in the city.
Cars are not sacred. Cars are not sacred. Cars are not sacred. Cars are not sacred.
I don't think cars are sacred
I don't think cars are sacred. I also don't think you should be shamed for living in the city and owning a car. Take me for example. I live with my SO, who works far outside the city, while I work downtown. We struck a balance by living in Somerville - I have a relatively painless commute on the T or my bike, and he drives. Just because he has a job that requires a car (and has been unable to find a better one in the city), doesn't mean that I should be required to give up my easy T/bike commute and be relegated to commuter rail land, spending significantly more on transportation.
There's a balance here.
Also, peoples' circumstances change. Often quite unexpectedly. Often involving the need for a car without wanting to uproot their entire lives to move farther out of the city.
You shouldn't be shamed for
You shouldn't be shamed for having them (obviously there are many legitimate reasons for doing so) but:
1. You (and other car owners) should have to bear the full cost to the city of providing space and infrastructure to support that car and also all of the cost of pollution and traffic injuries, and
2. Your desire to own a car should never trump the city's need to improve public transit (by removing on-street parking, etc.)
1. I support the idea of
1. I support the idea of paying higher costs for parking permits. My Somerville permit at $40/year is a good start, but still does not actually cover anything above administrative costs. I also regularly point out on this site that roads do not pay for themselves and we unfairly subsidize them at transit's expense. You might want to check my comment history before making assumptions about me. I'm curious how you propose that drivers bear the full cost of "pollution and traffic injuries" though. Are you suggesting an extra tax on gas? Because stricter emissions regulations and increased funding for research into alternative fuel sources would be far more effective at reducing pollution than charging drivers more, especially when many of them have no choice, as I have pointed out. And for the record, my SO who drives to his job far outside the city drives a Prius specifically because of the fuel economy. Now for the "cost of traffic injuries"... are you suggesting that instead of funding emergency services through tax dollars, we should instead be sending a bill to the person who was at fault in an accident? Because there are a thousand reasons that doesn't work, and the taxpayers will inevitably end up paying the costs anyway. Finally, car owners should not be expected to pay the *full* cost of all pollution and traffic injuries, because, as has oft been repeated on here, society as a whole benefits from it. Even people who do not own cars still have things delivered via truck. They still occasionally take cabs or Ubers. They still have friends and family visit via car. As long as our society remains so focused around cars, it will remain factually untrue for anyone to claim that they do not benefit from the existence of motor vehicles, and should not be expected as a taxpayer to bear any of the cost of supporting them.
2. I never said it did? I don't see the relevance of this statement to this discussion. But the fact that you made it implies that you failed to fully read and comprehend my comment that you're replying to - specifically the fact that you said "Your desire". The reason we own a car is not "desire" - it's the fact that my SO's job is not somewhere transit accessible (Atkinson, NH), and he has been unable to find a comparable job in the city. He does not "desire" to own a car. He despises driving, and would happily give it up if only he could find a job that was transit-accessible.
1. Yes, mainly through gas
1. Yes, mainly through gas taxes. And yes I would support paying for "increased funding for research into alternative fuel sources" by raising the gas tax (indeed, many of those alternative sources only become viable when gasoline is expensive). I would also support using that money to pay for better transit. I certainly wouldn't dispute that driving (especially truck driving) adds value to the economy, but that value comes at a cost, a cost which those truck drivers should be passing on to their customers so that we can make a rational decision to support goods that require the releasing of less carbon dioxide to get to market. We're all going to pay one way or another, but I'd rather we do it in a way that discourages carbon emissions, and by far the most widely proven method of doing this is to tax it.
2. My comment was in response to this:
Yes, people's circumstances do change, but that doesn't mean we should build or require parking (that you don't pay for in advance) just in case that happens. You should have to acquire this parking on the open market, just as when "life circumstances" cause you to need another bedroom in your apartment.
If nonresidents are supposed
If nonresidents are supposed to stop driving and take the T, so can residents.
City Has a Thing
Called public transportation. If everyone drove everywhere, no one would get anywhere.
Brighton resident here
I park on Centre and go do my business when I visit JP.
They can park on any of the
They can park on any of the main streets or municipal free lots. The resident parking restrictions are only for residential side streets.
As
another city of Boston resident I feel like you have absolutely no idea how resident parking works. Very rarely will it have an effect on businesses because in most areas it's only enforced from late evening to early morning (when people who live there get home from work and need to park within a reasonable distance from where they reside.) In some select areas resident parking is enforced at all times, preventing people from driving into the city from who-knows-where and ditching their car in, let's say Southie, purely for their own commuting convenience. Outside visitors are welcome, to metered or visitor parking at the appropriate times.
The real problem that's been ignored by comments so far is the amount of development that has gone on in the Fenway area without adequate parking. When I went to BLS that area was legitimately covered in parking lots, now all those lots are high rise apartments and condos. No shit parking sucks.
enforcement
So sometimes its enforced, and other times its not. If you don't live there, how are you supposed to know if the law is being "enforced" at the time you're looking to park?
And required parking is half the reason housing is so expensive here. Transit oriented development, and transit adjacent developments should not be forced to follow prescribed parking requirements.
Hours of enforcement are marked
If the hours of enforcement are not 24/7, they are so marked. If they're not marked, assume it's 24/7. Not rocket science, is it? Sign says "Resident Permit Parking Only", if you don't have a resident permit, you don't park there.
Nope
I was an Allston resident who would come home from work late at night and have to content with Brookline residents parking in our streets and was so grateful when we finally got resident-only parking and the Brookline people started getting tickets until they got the message and stopped parking overnight on Boston streets.
Brookline wants to keep their streets clear at night? Good for them, but not when it causes problems on our roads.
Permit parking doesn't reserve spaces for anybody - and many neighborhoods have far more permits than actual spaces - but at least it gives residents of a particular neighborhood a fighting chance for a space. It's the least the city can do for them (whether the permits should be free is another question).
Finally, a knowledgeable and sensible comment...
Really amazed at those who actually think that resident permit programs should be abolished. For the neighborhoods they serve, they're pretty essential (unless you're of the school of thought that says cars are evil). And every resident permit program allocates a number of visitor spots appropriate to the adjoining businesses and the program is open to allocation modification based on the inevitable changes to the commercial-residential mix. In the South End, the permit program works. In the SE, our Parking Task Force has made a number of trecommendations to improve the program: pay for resident parking stickers, limit the number per household, allow residents with no car to get a visitor permit that allow them to park in resident spots if they rent a car, and create a citywide universal permit for zip and other look alikes that allow any share vehicle to park in any resident spot anywhere in the city (a big parking advantage that encourages share ride use). We're still talking to the city about how to implement these recommendations which we think are sensible for the SE.
But there are a couple of pockets of streets in the SE that we discovered have no signage whatsoever (Columbus Avenue actually used to be this way until 4-5 years ago) and we learned that these spots fill up first thing in the morning and in our case were being grabbed by out of town Copley employees who park there, walk to work, get free parking, and lock out residents. On parts of Shawmut where there is no signage, these spots are advertised as open to airbnb guests, noted on blogs as "cheapest place to park in the city" or used for employee parking by Back Bay businesses. On Columbus Avenue, we actually studied the impact of unpermitted areas and discovered a second impact. Transportation and PWD folks watched and were amazed as car after car (presumably from the burbs) parked on Columbus at 6 AM, then went to their trunks and pulled out bag after bag of their garbage and put it on our streets. Our suburban neighbors who have to pay for dump access or trash pick up were routinely bringing in tons and tons of their garbage and making Boston pay to dispose of it. After the resident program was implemented, all those problems went away and we have no complaints from businesses or residents.
We second Adam's comments.
Thank you
Well said!
Just think: If we'd charged
Just think: If we'd charged market-price for those spaces instead of rendering them mostly unused, we could have crated a steady income stream from those people which would, I'm sure, more than offset the cost of dealing with their garbage.
Meh
Resident parking SHOULD be a thing. And I could be mistaken but isn't it typically only in force during home hours, as in, NOT during business hours? I don't own a car but I can certainly understand the desire to be able to reasonably find a spot in your own neighborhood.
Most permit parking is
Most permit parking is enforced 24/7, though there are some places I know of that allow 2-hour visitor parking during the day.
Not quite
It gets enforced in different ways based on the situation in an area. For example, there is resident parking around Forest Hills from 8 AM to 6 PM Monday to Friday since those are the times when commuters would be parking in the neighborhood to take the Orange Line. In places like the Back Bay, you'd want it 24/7, since there is constant demand.
That's why I used qualifiers
That's why I used qualifiers like "most" and "some".
My point was that it varies from neighborhood-to-neighborhood, and even street-to-street, and isn't uniformly enforced only during certain hours.
Thanks for the info
Thanks for the info
My bad
My comment will remain, in shame.
It does seem ridiculous that
It does seem ridiculous that a short term visitor (even a delivery driver) can be slapped with an expensive ticket, while someone with a permit can leave their car in one spot for weeks at a time. Allow anyone 1 hour of parking, cars with a sticker from a different neighborhood 2 hours, and a 72 hour per space limit for permit holders.
And they really need to do away with the spaces that are metered by day, permit only by night, with no buffer time in between. It's not uncommon to see huge swaths of them empty at certain times of the day (namely, late afternoon while the meters are still in effect but the permit-only time is looming). Enforce the time limit later, and allow permit holders to park there for up to an hour while the meters are in effect.
No it doesn't
No, it really doesn't. When you come home from work and find that all the spaces in your neighborhood are taken by "short term visitors" or "one-time visitors", it doesn't matter how long or how frequently they're there. What matters is that you can't park.
If there are a lot of short
If there are a lot of short-term visitors, you won't have trouble finding a spot because there will be a lot of turnover.
There are plenty of non
There are plenty of non-resident spaces in JP, especially around the area where most of the restaurants can be found. Some of them have signs that state parking is limited to one or two hours. Finding an empty spot at peak restaurant time can be tricky, though.
Did she
move someone's week-old space saver as well?
For being one of the most intelligent cities in America, we could learn a thing or two (...probably from a kindergarten class) about being functioning adults.
Coulrophobes!
Charge for Resident Parking Stickers
The city of Boston should charge for resident parking stickers. The city of Cambridge charges for resident parking stickers $25.00 a car a year and they thus have money for and provide services to the elderly which the city of Boston does not.
The desire of residents for resident parking stickers is understandable, in some neighborhoods if one gets home from work after 5PM there are no parking spaces available and one has to circle the neighborhood for an hour sometimes 2 hours hoping to catch someone getting out of a space hopefully walking distance to their home.
However it is not fair to other residents of the city who can not walk to various things this city has to offer (not all city neighborhoods have decent public transportation) but are not allowed to park on these streets, while at the same time residents with parking stickers can park on the streets of those city residents for whom resident parking stickers are not provided.
At a minimum the city should charge something for resident stickers in exchange for preferential use of city streets. $25.00 a year per car would not be too much to ask
People who pay money for private parking have to pay property tax to the city for their parking spaces (for example people who own one parking space at 70 Brimmer Street have to pay the city property tax of $3177.00 a year for that parking space and get nothing from the city for it, nor do they get a residential exemption for it as they do not live in the parking space) so why shouldn't people who the city allows preferential use of city streets disadvantaging and prohibiting other city residents from using them have to pay something for this preferential use of these parking spaces.
Lots of exceptions, too
I'm pretty sure that if you're over 65 in Cambridge you get a sticker for free.
There are people who B&M about the cost of the stickers, but if you have the money for a car, insurance, registration, excise tax, etc, you can afford 15¢ a day for parking.
I agree, it blows my mind
I agree, it blows my mind that not only are resident stickers unlimited but that they are free. A token charge would not be out of place. As is, the city is LOSING money on permits, because the city still has to pay someone to process applications, approve them, send them out, the cost of the stickers, etc, etc. The program should at the very least be revenue neutral.
$25 per year isn't nearly
$25 per year isn't nearly enough. Boston drivers are entitled babies. Just look at the space savers still on streets and the note at the top of this article. The $25 would not come close to covering the value of the land and the budget to maintain streets. It would just give drivers more reason to act ridiculous and scream "I pay for this spot!!1!" while physically threatening someone even though they are receiving handouts from non drivers.
Base the price around demand and property value per neighborhood. A parking spot in the Back Bay should cost at least several hundred per year. No more hand outs. If you want to take up a big chunk of public land then pay for it.
Yawn. This schtick is
Yawn. This schtick is getting old....
How about this instead?
http://www.reinventingparking.org/2014/06/japans-proof-of-parking-rule-h...
Car culture forced into the cities at the expense of resident quality of life is getting old.
Don't let perfect be the
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good, dude. 25$ to start can mean yearly, biyearly, whatever, increases. Politics guarantees they will never roll out a thousand dollar permit to start.
Seriously, Fenway residents?!
I hope some Fenway residents park in this twit's driveway so she understand how it feels.
something tells me...
...that most of you drive SUVs
When something people want is free, there is never enough of it
I agree with all the comments above suggesting a charge for parking. We humans have hundreds if not thousands of years of experience solving the problem of allocating a scarce resource: it's called a price. So much bad policy stems from the reluctance for the city to charge anything like the market price for parking spots (or charge any price at all), sometimes even rising to the level of violence (such as slashed tires or physical fights) as a way to resolve these sorts of property-rights disputes since the system fails to do so. We don't provide hotel rooms, restaurant meals, or even subway passes for free; why should some of the most valuable real estate in the country be free?
Instead, the city should charge something for residential permits, and insure some non-resident spaces are open on every block by having demand-sensitive pricing. This would provide important revenue to support alternative means of transportation (making it easier for those who prefer to take transit, walk, or bike, to do so), while also insuring that anyone who wants or needs to drive can find a spot quickly and not burn gas and contribute to air pollution and climate change circling endlessly to park.
As to concerns about economic equity, disability, and elderly access--these can be addressed separately. Set up a baseline system where all parking is appropriately priced, and then subsidize individual users as warranted by justice concerns.
Really
If this is true why don't you leave it to the cops to give them tickets..... flyers are pointless.
Because that's not what cops do
Because that's not what cops do. They might put a tag on (for example) a tour bus that's idling in a neighborhood, taking up six parking spaces, IF a resident complains, but otherwise it's not their job and they don't do it.
Fun fact: some spaces are RESIDENT during certain hours
Fun fact: some spaces in that neighborhood are RESIDENT spaces after certain hours. I'm thinking specifically of Edgerly Road, which was like this the last time I checked, but there may be others as well.
Some of you need to unknot your knickers. You may not like resident parking, but them's the rules of the game right now: not the unwritten rules, the real deal. And yes, all the necessary information is on the signs. Given that, I'd say this note qualifies as a pretty mild rebuke, and if you got it, the last thing you should be doing is getting into a self-righteous snit about it.
That fact wasn't as fun as I
That fact wasn't as fun as I wanted it to be. :-(
You're right
Yeah, I agree, in retrospect, it was insufficiently fun.
Bingo! This is indeed Edgerly
Bingo! This is indeed Edgerly Road. But my tweet (if people actually bothered to click the link and see the sign) was NOT about taking someone's Resident Permit Only spot, but legally parking for a couple hours in a spot marked for commercial vehicle use between 7am-7pm on weekdays AND getting that flyer.
For the record, I am all for resident permit parking. BUT there's no need to be rude to visitors obeying parking regulations while area businesses are open. A friend was parked in a visitor spot on Westland Ave and was spared the flyer.
Feel free to come spend your money in my neighborhood(s) while obeying citywide two-hour limit / no overnight / no visitor/guest parking regulations.
A resident-only on-street
A resident-only on-street space is not the same thing as a driveway.
And presumably, residents of Fenway do drive to other people's neighborhoods from time to time. You could even say that's the whole point of having a car -- to go places where you don't live.
You might be surprised...
You might be surprised at how incensed some suburbanites will get at someone parking in the street in front of their house. Not kidding.
To them I say too bad. The
To them I say too bad. The same as I'd like to say to Fenway residents who complain that they don't get enough preference for street parking.