Letters on parking passes?

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

I just got a new residential parking sticker and visitor passes, and they have a big "B" on them. Somerville isn't going to districted parking, is it?

Comments

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

I think they are keeping the option open if they decide it's the best way to deal with Beacon Street, but nothing has been announced yet.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i think the letters have been around for awhile, and are intended for some use of expiring different areas' parking passes in different months.

[kelkyag]

Visitor passes have been districted for years (and I think are technically only good in a small radius of their home address, but certainly only in their zone).

[smammy]

On the back of your visitor pass is a precise definition of where they work. I don't have one in front of me but I remember it making sense.

[wombatbanana.livejournal.com]

If your parking pass has an A on it, it means it expires at the end of January in the given year.

If it has a red A, it means you've committed adultery.

[kelkyag]

Now being able to check mine: "The visitor parking permits allow a visitor to park in legal spaces on the street or adjacent street of the resident he/she is visiting."

[enhf94.livejournal.com]

Four or five years ago when they talked about it in my Resistat, the city staff were well aware that businesses and residents favored ciitywide sticker-permits pretty strongly. That may have changed (I doubt it) or city staffers may have rotated in/out (a little more likely) or the city may someday decided it's necessary (possible but not my recent impression). Please note my data is way out of date.

But as noted above, those letters aren't about this particular thing.

[samcoren.livejournal.com]

I hope one day we can defect and officially take up the name Camberville. First you give us our own special parking sticker, and then we become our own municipality. It's a natural progression.

Also the best way to deal with Beacon Street: Don't greatly inconvenience a neighborhood and a hundreds of routine bike commuters with a dangerously designed experimental cycling facility that only covers small stretches of road to win brownie points for the mayor's administration.

Seesh.

[samcoren.livejournal.com]

Visitor passes have always had letters; Resident passes have always had numbers. The new "2014" resident sticker made me do a double take when I saw one for the first time. So used to them being round, I thought they were for Cambridge from a distance.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

FTW

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I mean, what else are "visitor" passes for?

[smammy]

Hm, not so precise or unambiguous as I remember...

[smoterh.livejournal.com]

Actually the track is much safer option than lines on the pavement. Biker community is very much in favor of the cycle track.

[samcoren.livejournal.com]

This is false - only *some* of the bike community is in favor of tracks. I've met with several cyclists who don't support the design and many of them spoke at February's hearing. Riding behind parked cars is a great way to get hooked to death by turning vehicles. You're still going to have regular painted bike lanes for half the length of the street anyway. The design is purely a vanity project at this point.

[cden4.livejournal.com]

Yes there are a handful of experienced cyclists that are opposed to cycle tracks. And they have every right to speak out at public meetings.

However, all of the transportation advocacy organizations are in favor of them: Boston Cyclists Union, MassBike, LivableStreets Alliance, as well as the Somerville Bicycle Committee and Cambridge Bicycle Committee.

They are also nationally an accepted type of facility, endorsed by NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials). Their new Bikeway Design Guide has much guidance on how to installed them on a city street. New York, Chicago, and Portland have recently installed cycle tracks and are in the process of adding more.

Plus, we already have them in Cambridge and Boston with more planned.

No bike facility is 100% safe. But cycle tracks have been shown to strike the best balance of safety and comfort, appealing to a much wider audience than bike lanes or shared lanes would. And it has been shown that there is a safety in numbers effect. The more people there are biking, the safer it becomes as motorists become used to looking for them and operating safely around them.

[smoterh.livejournal.com]

How dare you come here and comment with your researched and well formed opinions. ;)

[i-leonardo.livejournal.com]

some percentage of the neighborhood around sullivan square is very vocal about feeling peevish that "outsiders" park near the T stop during the day. i found a bunch of references to their complaints in alderman meeting reports going back at least a few years and i vividly remember a couple of them showing up at town meetings related to permit changes in the magoun square neighborhood (i couldn't figure out why they were there, but whatever). i didn't see as many complaints from the davis area, which i would expect to have more of a problem.

i have a dim recollection that a couple of aldermen are strongly in favor of districted permitting and i heard a bunch of sturm und drang about how terrible the parking *would* be (eventually) for magoun and ball sq when the green line is extended.

i'll be very surprised if it isn't officially proposed in the next 18 months. i might be open-minded about the idea if the city seemed to have any influence at all over getting the buses to run on schedule, run in the evenings, or have any north-south routes across the city. but that doesn't seem likely.

[samcoren.livejournal.com]

No bike facility is 100% safe so you have to figure out what makes sense on a case by case basis; especially in a dense neighborhood. We're not talking about the *idea* of cycle tracks being good - we're talking about this particular design and haphazard implementation. That's the problem with this - you're selling people on general concepts and not thoroughly explaining the reality of what the city is trying to build. Most of that 60% of "I would cycle but I'm concerned about safety" demographic you're trying to appeal to realize the ridiculousness of having a non-contiguous cycle track on Beacon Street. Cyclists who need to or wish to use the road will then have to deal with a much narrower street and be subjected to harassment.

And do tell me - how do drivers turning into a cross streets and driveways get used to looking for cyclists that are completely hidden behind parked cars? On the side without parked cars you'll only have 5' width of track because the mountable curb takes up a foot - the new bike lanes will be the same width by the way.... and cyclists wishing to pass one another or get around a a car parked on it will have to enter down the roadway.

The only way to have a safe cycle track on Beacon Street would be to eliminate almost *all* street parking on both sides - and that just ain't happening. The cycle tracks being proposed are nothing but a false sense of security and could end up leading to a lot more dangerous accidents than doorings.

[emannths.livejournal.com]

I hope the city has a plan for how they're going to clear the snow from cycletracks. They're not setting a very good example with the existing bike lanes, which have a 75% chance of being obstructed by snow or a parked car these days.

[samcoren.livejournal.com]

The southbound bike lane on Beacon is actually completely clear. It's clear because DPW came by and dug out the even side so that the road wasn't too narrow and people could get their cars out of the city lots. Go figure!

[emannths.livejournal.com]

Somerville Ave isn't so lucky. Even the "even side" has a bunch of snow in the bike lane instead of being cleared to the curb, probably because much of that stretch has no parking on that side. :-(

And don't get me started on some of Cambridge's streets...

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

I'm confused...visitor permits have always had letters on them, haven't they?

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

In Cambridge it is more specific; the visitor permit has a map on the back showing where this permit is valid. But in Somerville, yeah, it's a lot more vague. I've always assumed that was deliberate, to give the parking officers discretionary power.

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

oh, never mind, you're talking about the resident sticker, I guess.

[smoterh.livejournal.com]

I frequently ride on cycle tracks that have frequent cross streets and are in dense neighborhoods. I live about 40% of my time in Germany. The cycle tracks there have frequent road crossings, even more than Beacon street. These cycle tracks are much safer than riding on the street and most of the cycling community in Boston agrees. It seems to me you're just reaching for straw arguments with anecdotal proof to back it up. I understand that you're opposed to this project because you value 30 parking spots more than changes to Beacon street, but just go ahead and say it. Don't pretend you have the best interests bikers in mind. After all, few bikers that don't want to use the track can still ride on the road.