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Councilor would let Boston homeowners paint yellow no-parking zones around their driveways - and would fine people who park in them
By adamg on Thu, 08/08/2024 - 2:07pm
The Boston City Council will consider a proposal by Councilor Brian Worrell (Dorchester) to deal with the issue of big-ass SUVs making it harder for people with driveways to see oncoming traffic as they pull out by letting homeowners create yellow-paint no-parking areas 18 inches on either side of their driveways - and then calling for $25 fines for people who disregard those zones.
Worrell said yesterday that as people continue to buy vehicles approaching the size of semis, residents of houses with driveways - in particular seniors and people with disabilities - have more and more problems safely backing out of their driveways.
Worrell said he knows seniors who have taken to parking along the curbs themselves rather than in their driveways, which only causes more parking issues and which is not a solution available to people with disabilities because people in houses with driveways can't have HP spots designated in front of their homes.
Under Worrell's proposal, which will be studied by a council committee before the council as a whole votes on it, residents would first have to apply to BTD for permission to create the new mini no-parking zones. Motorists who refuse to curb their enthusiasm for parking next to or in front of driveways would face not only a $25 fine.
City Councilor Ed Flynn (South Boston, South End, Chinatown, Downtown) said Worrell's basic idea sounds fine. But, Flynn, leader of what amounts to the council's anti-bike-lane caucus, said he would want any hearings on the measure to include a look at whether bicyclists in bike lanes cause an additional hazard to people pulling out of driveways.
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 Worrell's proposed ordinance | 149.28 KB |
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Comments
In this heavy traffic
In this heavy traffic enforcement city I'm sure folks will be fined. /s
Pahking violations reliably fined
If a car is parked and sitting there for many hours, it's not uncommon for enforcement to stop by on a 311 complaint. Much more difficult to enforce those few-minute yet highly disruptive violations like blocking Bus/Bike Lanes for delivery.
However, a lot of these annoying driveway violations do occur during overnight parking periods, so maybe you're right.
Uh huh
Once word gets out, this would never fucking happen. Everyone would paint as big of a zone as they wanted without any approval. BTD would ticket anything inside the yellow paint no matter what. People would start knifing tires after painting the yellow lines after the car was already parked there. 311 would get complaints from the line painters and the parkers. The transparency of who actually registered for the zones versus who didn't would be as clear as curb paint. Neighborhoods would end up with more of a freakout over this than they do over space savers in the winter.
No, this is just...no.
Misguided
Why does this program need to exist at all? Why do individual property owners need to go through steps to assert that they are opting in to enforcing safe parking near their home? Why not just amend the current "parking in front of any driveway" statute to "parking within 18 inches of any driveway" and have BTD consistently enforce all parking infractions in all neighborhoods, rather than the current status quo of immediately enforcing everything* to the inch in downtown neighborhoods while statutes and signage in the residential neighborhoods are essentially meaningless?
*Except bike lanes. Parking in these seems to be permitted/encouraged in all neighborhoods.
nah, BTD won't even ticket people parked in bus lanes...
BTD can't even keep people out of the bus lane - just rode the bus home from work and as usual there were a bunch of cars parked in the bright red painted lane on a main road (washington street in rozzie). why do we think they are suddenly going to enforce little yellow lines scattered all around the city?
Video enforcement would fix
Video enforcement would fix this.
Be serious
BTD won't ticket or tow cars parked on the sidewalk.
The new Space Saver ver. 2.0
Old and busted: The timeless "Space Saver"
New hotness: The revolutionary "Homeowner No-Parking Zone"
As a bicycle commuter, I can confirm that no motorist would ever violate a painted exclusion zone.
Just a random thought: Ed Flynn and Brian McGrory could get together and do a great Grampa Simpson podcast.
Madonna did that once in
Madonna did that once in London.
*hard eye roll*
Can someone pick up my eyeballs.. they rolled onto the floor. I'm worried they went down the heating vent cuz they rolled so hard and far.
Seriously Flynn, I am no treehugger of bikers and bike lanes, but this is just silly. In fact, Bike lines should make it S A F E R because you now have that extra space to back out and have more of a view before backing out into the street.
This whole concept is smells rotten and I echo the other comment about this will turn into Home Depot in South Bay having a run on yellow paint.
I think the problem lies more with big ass SUV's in dense cities..... So thats a them problem, not a city problem. Get a smaller car if you can't back out of your small car-sized driveway, you don't need that big ass thing in the city.
The issue isn't SUV owners in driveways, though
It's people in small cars in driveways, who can't see over the giant SUVs parked on the street.
We're lucky to live on a street where there is never a problem like this, except maybe for a few days after a blizzard (the more common problem is that it's a two-way street and parking is allowed on both sides, but it's a narrow street, so that often leaves the equivalent of like 1 1/4 travel lanes, but that's another issue).
But I sympathize because there's this one particular intersection that I drive through all the time (it's on the shortest route from our house to Washington Street). It's a T intersection and, when we first moved here, I never had any problems getting through it from the, um, bottom of the T in our progression of smallish cars: Look both ways, then turn left, easy-peasy.
But now? When somebody parks, oh, his brown, not-even-that-big older pickup with the bed with one of those window cover things right at the the corner on the left? You CANNOT see oncoming traffic from your left until you've inched out just enough to get slammed into by somebody coming at you that way. Similar problem on the right.
Crashes ensue.
Got so bad that the people who live in the house right at the top of the T put up first one, then two large round mirrors on concrete bollards, one facing each direction, so that people like us can see what's coming without crashing (and presumably, winding up on their front lawn).
I get it
But still.. my comment still stands. Why do people need a big ass SUV in the city :-)
And for the record I've experienced this myself. I dont own a car but I rent cars to do errands sometimes. I curse because my town doesn't really enforce the 'no parking x feet to a corner'. Some streets people park right to the corner with their big ass SUV. Its sucks to pull out and see someone coming at you...
And I've experienced this as a pedestrian crossing a street with no crosswalk too. So I can sympathize.
But I still don't agree with this idea of allowing people to paint curbing. Its ripe for abuse. The better idea would create and enforce a law that prohibits vehicles taller than X feet from parking at intersections and driveways for other than loading and unloading. Again the issue is the SUV's.. not really the driveways. Make it safe for all.
Not just SUVs
The better idea would create and enforce a law that prohibits vehicles
taller than X feetfrom parking at intersections and driveways for other than loading and unloading.At a lot of intersections, it's any vehicle that's parked too close to the intersection, especially from the viewpoint of a smaller/lower car. And especially when coming up to an intersection at the top of a hill.
Not to mention that such parking makes it harder to see pedestrians approaching an intersection/crosswalk.
I think you would have to say
I think you would have to say that the car could not park on the street at all. The easiest start is to have size limits on residential stickers.
The solution to all parking
The solution to all parking problems is to stop giving parking away for free. Charging, say, $200 for a yearly permit pass will lower demand and free up supply. Charge extra for big SUVs and trucks. The fee is still ridiculously low for how valuable the property is.
Nope
Charging for a permit to park on the street will have zero effect on the parking issue. Folks will pay for the permit and park. Your solution is not a solution at all.
Kinda agree
It will just turn residential parking into a class issue, and also make people who pay for the permit feel entitled to park like jerks all the time because "Hey I'm PAYING for this!"
That said, something does need to be done to reflect the idea that this is a resource we all pay for (tax maintenance of roads) being given away for free. Something does need to be done. It's just a really tough issue.
Explain
If we are paying for it how is the city giving it away for free? Folks pay to use it.
Should people also pay to use the Common or the beach? Maybe charge tourist to use the sidewalks that we pay for and they don't??
inefficient
Homeowners only need that visibility a few seconds per day. Reserving 18" of curb for those few seconds is not a good use of that valuable resource.
Really these homeowners need to get in the habit of reverse parking into their driveway. It's generally safer to reverse into a low-traffic area (the driveway or parking spot) than into a high-traffic area (the street), which is why reverse parking is inherently better. All cars made since 2018 also have backup cameras which makes you means you can reverse park more accurately than forward park. If they park backwards that, then driving out straight into the street becomes tons safer and easier.
Unfortunately, you wind up with another problem ...
On Boston's narrower side streets: Even if you back in with a back-up camera, you still need room to angle your entrance into the space and it becomes very difficult if there are people parked right up to the curved curbstone that marks off your driveway - and on the other side of the street directly opposite your driveway.
Another problem: frontage is too small for big vehicles
What you say is true, especially on narrow one-way streets.
And also, for many house lots, the parking space in front between your driveway and your neighbor's driveway is big enough for 2 sedans or 1 van and a sedan. But it's NOT big enough to accommodate 1 sedan and 1 oversize SUVs or 1 PUVs (that's Pickup Utility Vehicles, the fake pickups where 2/3 of the vehicle is hood + cab with a tiny dumb pickup bed in the back not to be confused with Pickups which were once designed for real farmers).
Just one overlong vehicle can hog up to 1.5 spaces, and then basically no car can fit in the 0.5 space left. But people will park there anyway, because there's limited parking and they tell themselves it's the only space they can find. So they park there and block yours or your neighbor's driveway.
City needs to charge a fee for residential parking stickers and that fee needs to increase exponentially with vehicle length over a certain threshold.
charging for stickers just creates more big cars
It favors the rich. There should be a size limit for cars parked in non-commercial spots without a commercial license
There should be a size limit on residential parking.
It makes no sense to allow huge vehicles to park on the streets. If you can afford an 70k truck then afford a parking space.
not going to happen
Councilor Wu at least proposed charging money for residential parking permits. Mayor Wu is just ignoring the issue.
The city has given countless
The city has given countless millions in handouts to drivers and look at the mess it’s created. End the welfare. Charge for storing private property on city land.
Isn't illegal to block a
Isn't illegal to block a driveway already? Aren't offenders liable for towing?
Relatedly, Is there, or was
Relatedly, Is there, or was there a rule that trucks can’t be parked in the most immediate parking space space to an intersection, or am I just thinking of the minimum parking exclusion at intersections?
When passenger trucks (Ahnold’s beeg ahssed Hummah) first came out it was controversial that what are basically passenger vehicles were frustratingly allowed the benefit of truck emission regulations, yet they don’t face truck exclusions on city streets and garages.
Funny, last night I was
Funny, last night I was watching this video from England where I heard an echo of Flynn's theory. Some lady is stating: "I would say that cars are often killing people because bikes are forcing them over the middle of the road".
It's just as stupid but cuter when said with a British accent.
The next few minutes of that video offer a more insightful commentary.
https://youtu.be/-_4GZnGl55c?t=16
this shit isn't surprising
but it is infuriating and a showboating waste of Council time and, for that matter, oxygen.
he really wants a hearing on this? what is there to "investigate"? bicycles are not a hazard to automobiles. it's physically impossible, unless the hazard is "are bicycles being launched through the windshields of unsuspecting motorists?"
on the other hand, cars pulling out of driveways are a hazard to cyclists. let's have a hearing on that, you jackhole.
Time to move out of the City.
Some people are just too high-strung to deal with other humans. If this is you it won't get better as you age.
So colorful
So we can't paint "no parking zones" red (hydrants, etc) because that would be unsightly. But we're OK with huge yellow squares all over the street. hmmmm.
How about they start with
allowing a homeowner or resident to park THEIR OWN vehicle in front of THEIR OWN driveway. That would free up a ton of spaces.
No Boston politician is brave enough for the solution.
Boston has had 100K more people living here, and the economy boomed. The difference was less cars. We don't have room for this much street parking. It is unsafe for pedestrians. Basically, we have this illusion where people can buy a car without being responsible for storing that car. The richer the neighborhood, the bigger the cars and the more reserved parking for people. It is crazy that we allow people that spend more than 50K on a car to claim they can't afford parking.
As long as politicians prioritize cars over human safety we will keep having problems. Charging for residential sticker will just make it worse. It will literally put larger cars in private parking on public streets. South Boston should eliminate residential parking and put in more short term metered spaces. This will help local businesses and increase tax revenue.
We need to make other cities
We need to make other cities in Massachusetts more desirable to live in. And link them with a bullet train.