davis_square | Parking task force recommendations

That's a nice thing they're proposing for non-locals employed by local businesses, where they'd get permits for parking 6pm-3:30am. But wouldn't it then make sense to let them park where they will before 10am too? Why only second shift if these folks commute to work in Somerville?

There is an existing business parking permit program for 9am-5pm workers. The change is to introduce a new program for 2nd shifters.

Feels weird.

Raising meter rates to $1/hour, fine, I don't think anyone was especially opposed to that.

But why convert 8 streets that aren't resident-only now, to resident-only overnight? It doesn't seem to be based on a call from the residents of those streets that there isn't enough parking in their neighborhoods. Instead, it seems like a move to make it harder to visit people in Somerville - and the report doesn't even say which streets.

Seems like a "lets do something sucky, but so much less sucky than the completely insane and out of line thing we proposed at first, the it'll look okay and people can't complain because it's such a big improvement."

*bitter and upset at Somerville*

The 8 streets are "Broadway, Medford Street, Highland Avenue, Holland Street, Elm Street, Somerville Ave, Beacon Street, and Washington Street". I still have no idea *why*.

The reason is that these are streets with lots of businesses/stores/etc on them. They didn't want to make them permit-only 24 hours, because that would stop non-residents from utilizing businesses, so they become flexible; residents can park overnight, non-residents can park during the day. It starts at 10am so that people from out of town don't park all day in order to commute from Somerville via bus and train (on the approximation that most people work at 9am) and it ends at 2am so that visitors/employees of night-oriented places don't have to move their cars before places close, but do not park all night. They are also exploring options on spur streets related to these corridors, and other streets and special circumstances, like Vernon Street studios, churches, etc.

As for the idea that "lets do something sucky, but so much less sucky than the completely insane and out of line thing we proposed at first, the it'll look okay and people can't complain because it's such a big improvement." I have to say as someone who worked on the parking task force you have it wrong. It is not about making things "look okay" or stopping complaints. People complain no matter what the plan, they complain about how things are now, how they might be, how they should be, about anything and everything. Nobody at these meetings was worried about eradicating complaints. And it's not about "doing something sucky." We had the impossible goal of balancing the needs of the city (i.e. revenue), the needs of residents, and the needs of businesses. Of course nobody gets exactly what they want, nobody is 100% happy, but we tried to make things better than the initial proposal, NOT to make things look a certain way or some conspiracy to fool people.

One important problem not mentioned in the report: Park Cards reportedly cannot be used at a meter if any time remains on the meter. I don't care whether you 'eat' the time or credit it against the new parker, but this has to be fixed if you want anyone to use Park Cards.

Edited 2009-07-13 12:40 (UTC)

You seem to be dismissing some concerns by reinforcing them.

If Somerville scraps the current parking changes entirely, and then later comes up with a new plan to change parking restrictions on a few major streets, with clearly communicated, sensible reasons for doing so, that could work out.

The current process is irreparably tainted. Many of us absolutely do not trust the city on this. It's not the fault of the new parking task force, and even you admit that you had an impossible task. The result sucks. The city is making use of the fact that they started with something so bad that anything less can look "better" in comparison to the earlier fantasy. The fact that they put you in that position means that you, the parking task force, could do nothing to prevent that except to say "do nothing now, city, because you really fucked up. try again later."

As I posted in the other thread, most of the streets in question already have 2 hour parking except by permit from 8 AM to 6 PM. So there's no need to make them permit-only until 10 AM to stop all-day commuters.

If they want to make people who park overnight buy a permit, why not require permits just between 2 AM and 6 AM?

(And here's a crazy idea to boost revenue: allow anyone to park on any currently-permit street, if they pay a few dollars at a pay-and-display machine. A lot of cities have that scheme.)

Looking at the full review it DOES look like the task force decided to ignore the P&TO's recommendation to convert all streets to resident-only. Living on a non-major street that is NOT resident only (and LIKE it this way) I applaud you for that.

I believe everything in there is reasonable (except for the 'Sunday' recommendation).

For those of us who live on a street which is about to become resident only, and who is having trouble getting the state in which she purchased her car to release the title for the vehicle so that she can register it here AND get a parking permit for her car, this totally sucks. Also, it appears that I can't have friends visit me from out of town anymore, since they won't be able to park anywhere near my house.

It's really not clear to me if the task force proposal overrides the P&TO's conversion of all streets to residental-only or if that happens anyway while the analysis and study mentioned in the pilot phase goes on. Does anyone know?

It's unclear, because they're leaving things open to later phases. It'd be much better if it got rid of the phases, but perhaps it was politically necessary as a pretense that they're not actually cancelling all the other changes?

This seems like a nice balance, and approach. I'm bummed about the 8 streets changing to 2 hour limit during the day; but can definitely live with it.

No, they're changing them to restricted parking overnight. 2 hour limit is almost irrelevant in this case. If you're from outside Somerville and parking at those times, it's probably for an overnight visit with someone in Somerville, so either you can park there 'til morning, or you can't park there at all. The new rules are basically that you can't park there at all.

They might mitigate that by assigning guest permits per-resident rather than per-household. As things stand now, when people are sharing an apartment they also share guest permits.

Edited 2009-07-13 14:49 (UTC)

In reference to the comment that these regulations had to balance several things, including the city's need for revenue. In my opinion, parking restrictions should NOT be to provide revenue to the city. If that's the case, then every time the city needs money, they will make parking more difficult to enhance revenue. They will also ticket much more aggressively (as has been happening lately). Parking restrictions should be to enhance the quality of life of the residents, and to help businesses to attract customers, and that's it. I'm sick to death of paying more money every year for the privilege of parking a car on a city street which I have already supported through higher and higher taxes.

Yup, they're using parking to substitute for taxes, and it's really frustrating, especially since their initial answers were trying to avoid saying that.

Partly, though, Somerville is sufferring from the fact that the state isn't taxing enough, because the state is afraid to raise any sensible taxes. So one thing we can do, in addition to yelling at Somerville for its really bad parking plans (which we should keep doing), is calling our legislators to beg for higher income and gas taxes. Fortunately some of Somerville's delegation have been leaders in the state house in trying to make that happen, so they deserve our thanks. We can also try to get our friends in other parts of the state to make those calls.

I don't think we should accept any tax/fee hikes until they do something about out-of-control spending/hiring/pensions, etc. Until they reign in spending, this situation will never change. How many jobs did Patrick create (for friends) in his office? Why? How many did the Turnpike Authority lay off before talking about increasing tolls (none), when will someone take on the unions controlling state and city workers? They have benefits, salaries and pensions not enjoyed by the rest of us, yet they must have more taxes to continue funding this debacle. Patrick said no more taxes/fees before reform, and I think we should hold him to that!

I need help seeing what the market is for the ParkCard. Somerville residents will just park on a nearby permit street around the major squares, and out of towners will just put (a lot of) quarters in. I guess these might be kind of useful if you are an out-of-towner who works in one of the squares and can get your card expensed, but still pretty pricey.

Also, has any thought been given towards the adoption of the kind of meter that prints you a ticket?

Ah, good idea. You can cut out the middleman by receiving a 'parking ticket' automatically as soon as you park!

*sarcasm*
I do know that's not what you meant!

Parking task force recommendations

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Not bad.

Re: Not bad.

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taxes

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