Parking task force recommendations

[georgy.livejournal.com]

 As linked to in Rebekah Gewirtz's newsletter:

http://www.somervillema.gov/NewsDetail.cfm?instance_id=1481

Comments

[svilletheatre.livejournal.com]

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.

[ron_newman]

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.

[cos]

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."

[boblothrope.livejournal.com]

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.)