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Space-saver wars begin; outbreak reported in Jamaica Plain
By adamg on Sat, 12/09/2017 - 10:05pm
At 4:33 p.m., somebody sent 311 this photo of a space saver on Forbes Street in JP and demanded the city do something about it:
Someone clearly did not shovel this apt but is taking an ownership of the spot. Please remove this trash can and let the owner know that s/he cannot do that.
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Comments
I’ve just got to ask
How does the citizen expect the city to “let the owner know that s/he cannot do that”?
But yeah, not enough snow for savers.
Just do it
I used to live on that street and sometimes would go and pull the "wrongful" space-savers out of the street and just leave them on the sidewalk.
"Wrongful" meaning space-savers put out at the start of a snow storm or someone using a space-saver 5 days after a storm.
Holy Safety Cones!!!
First honors going to Jamaica Plain, Not South Boston ?
Depending on
when these were put out, first honors could actually go to East Boston. Pictures were floating around our Facebook groups well before the sun went down,.
For once I'm thankful I live in Arlington
No overnight parking. Anywhere. By law.
A real pain the rest of the year, but we don't have space saver wars in winter.
and Brookline, Newton (for half the year) etc
Boston needs to follow suit. Pretty sad that the suburbs are way ahead of the curve here.
true..
but we do have the south end. the only neighborhood in boston to ban space savers.
such a childish, selfish, ass-backwards rule. c'mon Boston, we are smarter than this.
Banning Boston street parking is crazy talk
There are whole neighborhoods full of triple deckers. Where are these cars going to go? In many of these 'hoods there is nowhere to build garages and even if you did it would take away from space that could be used for needed housing.
The space saver situation doesn't need the nuclear option.
The mayor should stop condoning it and ignore the saver situation like mayors used to before Menino.
Stock answer should be we enforce all laws and that includes obstacles and trash in the street. Then start enforcing the laws. Even a couple DPW pickup trucks (along with parking enforcement staff) just driving around putting savers back on the sidewalks would disrupt the practice. Trash trucks would be better.
Also enforce round weekly alternate-side street-sweeping rules year round. This would allow for much quicker snow removal on side streets and also be a deterrent to log-term space saving.
We need practical solutions that won't raise taxes or can be offset with fines. I'm no saver fan but i don't want my property taxes going up over savers.
Because walking is the end of the world?
Forbes St is steps from a bus stop and less than half a mile from Stony Brook. And all of JP is like that. Less cars would benefit everyone.
You're preaching to the choir
I walk quite a bit and drive in the city as little as possible. I'm all for less cars. It's a great goal and there are many good reasons to shoot for it. Space savers is very low if they're on that list at all.
They're not that big of a deal, honestly. I laugh every year when so many people get worked up about them on UH.
Nope
Walking ? In snowstorms ? Not happening.
stay home then
because driving around in a snowstorm is stupid and selfish.
Ahead of the curve
Or is it a means of the local government controlling the population? One could argue that these well to do suburbs believe that only those that can afford off-street parking are the type of people they want living in their town. Keeps the young and the poor away.
It's not about the environment, it is about economics.
you are right
Promoting car owner ship keeps people poor and unhealthy. By the way, those towns that ban overnight parking have great T coverage.
#notmypoint
And the "great" T coverage in those areas didn't just "happen". Those towns are filled with people who had the flexibility and wealth to miss work and/or advocate & donate to powerful decision makers to get what they wanted. There are THREE extensions of the green line alone, never mind the bus lines, into primarily white, wealthy neighborhoods while there are only two lines for the largest two neighborhoods of Boston, Roxbury and Dorchester. So the wealthier got to have their cake and eat it too. Own a car and take the train to work.
Dorchester and Roxbury
Have great T coverage. But of course you are same person that doesn’t want denser housing in Dorchester because of you can’t admit that you are the traffic.
Where to begin
I agree with you, but I believe Brookline and Newton have better T coverage. Better than the larger neighborhoods of Boston, which I believe is not fair to the working class, immigrant, college & high school student populations who live there. I believe that these very affluent towns were able to shape transportation policy in their favor while parts of Boston were ignored.
As a reminder I ride the MBTA Monday through Friday for work and then on the weekends to get out of the house. Please don't try to make me look like I am part of the problem when I am not.
And if my partner & I didn't want to live in a densely populated, do you think we would have bought a home in Dorchester? Do you really think that? There are still houses in the suburbs, albeit crazy expensive, but that's not what we want. But feel free to keep projecting incorrect assertions onto me.
What is your belief based on?
Go to MBTA website and count the routes. It is obvious that Roxbury and Dorchester have more coverage. It is is dishonest to say “I believe” when the facts are readily available. And when you have to say in every post I live in Dorchester it comes off as if you are worried that nobody believes it.
parking
On street car storage (really anything more than 2 hours) is a menace and should be banned city wide. Want to actually use a car then fine, but if you want to store it somewhere then that's something you should figure out rather than expect the city to gift you space.
That ship sailed, my friend
Probably 75 years ago.
So what
Time to load a bunch of cars on a new ship and send them away.
Things Change
65 years ago, when boston had 800,000 people, very few people owned cars. With the population currently rising to the same levels, 1 car for every 2 people just won't fit.
You don't need a car in JP, plenty of buses and trains. If you couldn't park on the street overnight then alot of people would stop pretending they needed a car. you can get off street parking for 125 -160 blocks from forbes st.
Okay
You are assuming the owner of all the vehicles in Jamaica Plain work, shop, and spend their leisure time only in Boston. What if these people work out along Route 128 but like the idea of being to walk to and from restaurants on the week-ends? What if they work in town but like to visit their families in the suburbs on Sundays? Or, what if they just want the mobility that the vast majority of Americans enjoy?
When other municipalities banned overnight parking, Boston didn’t. And yes, this was when 800,000 people lived here. Politically, banning people from parking on the street, be the street in Mattapan, Southie, Brighton, Easter, or yes, your precious Jamaica Plain, is a losing battle.
none of your hypothesis's change the number of cars
You are right about the politics, people are egocentric and support what is best for themselves. I am not saying that adults can't decide to buy themselves a car, lets stop pretending its a need. It is a luxury, not an entitlement. If the government stop subsidizing it, we could have more safety and health for all.
It's not a luxury to a lot of people
Again, if you live in Mattapan and work in Waltham, what's the best way to get to work?
Besides, it's not like the Town of Arlington, the town noted at the beginning of this thread, is some kind of pedestrian nirvana. 69% of workers who live in Arlington drive to work, versus that stubborn 44% in Boston that you hate so much. The reality is that back in the day, suburbs of Boston adopted these laws, but they also adopted zoning and land use policies to ensure that drivers would be able to leave their cars places overnight.
Ha
I live in Dorchester and love everyone that lives here. Why do think that fresh air and exercise are punishment?
And how would you get to Waltham every day?
And it seems you have missed the countless times I mention walking a mile from Forest Hills station every day and jogging around Hyde Park all the time.
I just know that if I worked at the UPS sorting facility in Westwood, I’d drive every day.
Using the name to ID my
Using the name to ID my earlier post. Willing to open myself to being called crazy.
You seem young. Im middle aged and my parents are quite elderly. I live in Dot too and there's no way in hell I'm going carless. I'm a long walk and a slow and infrequent bus ride from a T station.
I need to get my parents about to appointments and neither the T nor Uber cut it.
Let's be practical. I'd be for a $50-100 fee to park on the street year round. (5-10 bucks a month.)
Use that money to develop alternatives to cars. Or get the T funded properly somewhere else.
I'm all for incentives and disincentives but not pie in the sky stuff.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. On street parking is a non-issue almost every almost 350 days a year.
Car drivers have to be invested in the solution. Otherwise it ain't happening.
Yes
Even if you buy a house that's commutable near your work, people change jobs more often than they used to, and especially if you're a two-income family (a new-er phenomenon.)
You can buy a house near the T all you want, but there is no Magic Subway Line in any city that will permanently connect 2 adults to whatever jobs they get over the course of their lifetime.
Space savers are far ...
less of a safety hazard for cyclists than are on street parked cars (which in essence are just space savers too) so I’m all for them.
Non sequitur
If there's enough snow lying around that spaces are shoveled and saved, you're not riding your bike through those spaces. Are you trolling?