Starting tonight, Nov. 15 through April 15, drivers are not allowed to park on any City of Newton street for longer than one hour between the hours of 2 a.m.-6 a.m. Discuss.
Hello, parking ban!
by Village 14 | Nov 14, 2018 | Newton | 21 comments
Crazy Divers: Men be like...
drivers man be like
Ummm, why do we have this? I think I know, but I want to hear somebody admit it.
It should be eliminated and if elected, I will support Councilor Albright’s efforts to do so.
In their last meeting, the Public Safety and Transportation Committee was scheduled to discuss ending the ban on select streets. Does anyone have any information about this? The minutes have not been posted yet.
Email notification sent a few hours before ban takes effect for inclement weather. City should err on the side of caution, but heavily fine violators. Simple. The present system is ridiculously archaic.
Andy, We live near a GREEN line stop, and during parking emergencies the police do not ticket or tow. We have called several times, and the police’s reaction is that the people commute into Boston do not know there is a Newton parking ban. I don’t buy that line. The people who pay the price are the residents who then have a poorly plowed street. All it takes is one set of tickets or a tow, and commuters will learn quickly.
If you live near a T stop, such is life. Presumably this down-side is built into the value of your property along with the benefit of easy access to public transportation. You cannot have it both ways. As such, it is wrong for folks in this situation to burden the rest of us with a blanket ban. Of course, bans are simple (reflecting the cognitive abilities their supporters) and will likely be the policy of choice well into the future.
Am I the only one who has heard that one of the original, albeit unspoken, reasons for this ban was to place downward pressure on the number of people who could occupy rented homes?
I also live near Waltham. Perhaps something along the lines of their approach to overnight parking might be a solution. The parts of Waltham (and Watertown) nearest Newton have even more multi-family houses than us, and the single family houses tend to be smaller and lack parking for 2+ cars. If they can manage to allow overnight parking paired with mandatory removal (for lack of a better term) during snow emergencies and after staying in one place for 24 hours, certainly Newton can.
Elmo,
If there is a parking ban during a snow storm, there is no way a commuter went into Boston not knowing the forecast. The T has a parking lot and these cars don’t want to pay the fee. I don’t care about them parking there, except for the snow ban (during an active snow storm). If the car was ticketed or towed during a snow emergency, the drivers would think twice. I love living near the T, and I do benefit, however there are other options for a commuter on a snow predicted day than park on the street during a ban.
@Newtoner – We had a very lively discussion about the Parking Ban at Public Safety and Transportation. There was consensus on one thing: Both the Chief of Police and the Commissioner of DPW said the Ban is too long. So – as we continue the ban discussion we docketed an item on which many joined as co-docketers, to shorten the Ban – suggesting new dates of Dec 15 to April 1. It seemed that there was a lot of agreement on this. I hope it will be taken up at the next meeting of PS&T.
Some members of the Committee suggested that there should be a parking permit program for those who have absolutely no place to put their car(s). The Chief was not keen on a parking permit program.
My next step is to try to get a handle on the extent of the problem. No one in the city knows who has a driveway and who doesn’t. I’ve asked Doug from GIS to print maps for me of the neighborhoods in the proposed 4 precincts. I wonder if any members of V14 would be willing to work with me to collect data on the number and location of properties with no driveway. If you are interested in helping with this data collection process let me know @[email protected]. If we get enough volunteers we can make short work of this.
I’m not sure how commuters are relevant when discussing the overnight ban. The ban is between 2 and 6 AM, so not exactly commuting hours. I live right by a commuter rail station and people park on my block to commute but generally they start coming between 7 and 9 AM and they’re gone by about 6 PM.
Thank you to Susan and the other councilors working on this. Shortening the ban seems like a good start.
Ted, I agree with you. And when I head to Waltham after a snowfall, I don’t think their streets suffer for it. They seem plowed just fine and this winter I found our street clearing sub-par and Waltham seemed better. So they seem to be doing just fine there since eliminating the ban. I think we could use their system as a model.
The bottom line to me is that the only reason to ban parking is in the event of snow emergencies. Anyone allowed to park on the street in the winter should, as I am, be willing to find temporary alternatives during snow emergencies. The rest of the ban (typically 90% of winter nights, depending on the winter of course) is useless, and only punishes people without options.
As for commuters, that is not a winter ban problem, that is a snow emergency enforcement problem. I don’t think that is a relevant argument, though perhaps worth bringing up separately.
And shortening the ban dates does not solve the problem. Let’s get rid of this thing and move on.
..and thank you for your efforts, Susan. Time for Ward 1 Councillors to step up too!
You need to talk with public works regarding street accessibility. My street only gets cleaned properly after the parking takes effect. Keeping the street clean is not just a beautification effort–it prevents leaves and litter from clogging storm drains and polluting our waterways. It costs more to clean out a drain than run a street sweeper so it’s not just environmentally friendly but cost effective.
What I can’t understand is, if you have a place to park for a “winter emergency” then why can’t you just park there now? I can appreciate it might be a matter of convenience but not necessity.
@David M, here are three reasons people who have a place to park for a winter emergency cannot park there every day: #1 it is far from their homes. #2 it would cost too much to park there all the time. #3 if everybody did as you suggest, the parking lot or garage wouldn’t be able to accommodate everybody.
My place to park for a snow emergency is a very generous friend’s house in Needham. I live in West Newton, so it takes a fair amount of planning to get my car there and pick it up at the end of the storm.
Hello everyone,
I am from Connecticut and my boyfriend is from Newton. We only get to see each other on weekends. I have never heard of such a parking ban before. Connecticut has parking bans during snow storms only. My boyfriend has a one car driveway. Any tips on where to park when I visit him? Thanks in advance
Kiley – I know, I’ve lived in the Northeast for nearly my whole life and never lived anywhere with a parking ban until I moved to Watertown and now Newton. You could pay to park in the Riverside MBTA lot and have him pick you up. AFAIK it never gets full. You’d have to pay a few bucks a day.
@Kiley,
Ask one of his neighbors if they have space….
Susan,
Can you explain why the Chief isn’t “keen on permit parking”? This is such a widely used mechanism throughout the region (and the US), I think it can’t be dismissed without explanation.
Permit parking would also be a reasonable mechanism to control new developments that limit on-site parking because of transit oriented development. In fact, I believe this is one of the key justifications for permit parking. You could also solve this problem with limited “no overnight parking” zones.
I honestly don’t see how shortening the ban helps any resident. The people who don’t have off-street parking will still not have off-street parking during a shortened interval. You’re just reducing the number of possible tickets they can get.
The dates of the shortened ban you mention (Dec 15-April 1) still include the winter holidays, where residents are more likely to either travel or have overnight guests. To go to the trouble of shortening the ban but maintaining it during this most inconvenient of times seems like the worst of all worlds.
Can you or another Councilor explicitly state the goals of a continued ban? I go back to the question, “If the ban didn’t exist, would Newton create one?”
@mike
“If the ban didn’t exist, would Newton create one?”
Of course they would. Newtonians’ favorite pastime is banning things and generally sticking their noses in other people’s business. We banned leaf blowers for gods sake. If we could, we’d ban fire hydrants for taking up valuable public green space on sidewalks.