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Citizen complaint of the day: If the city refuses to do anything about space savers, it's time to take action
By adamg on Sat, 10/31/2020 - 2:41pm
A fed-up citizen filed a plan of action this morning for Seymour Street in Roslindale:
So since the city refuses to deal with my neighbors marking spots outside with cones for their family members i have decided to go and buy 20 traffic cones and i am going to start marking the entire street with space savers since the doesn't remove them.. Awesome.. Im going to go do it right now..
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Comments
Space Savers
For once a story about space savers that doesn't involve South Boston. I don't know how Southie got the exclusive on this. It's all over the city (and in some neighboring burbs).
I know this area
On the one hand, I gotta think this is a one time thing. I know this area, and I cannot say that it is typical to see cones put out by neighbors to save spaces aside from true snow events. Now, there has been utility work being done right at this spot, so this could be a case of Eversource or whoever blocking off space where they intend to do work and possibly not clearing the cones when they are done.
On the other hand, Seymour Street has to be the toughest residential street in Roslindale to get a parking spot. It's all 2 and 3 family houses, with few driveways. I don't live on the street (just nearby), and when it comes to parking, I'm happy I don't live there. Nothing against the people who live there, but going down the street you can see how parking is a pain.
That said, if someone truly did put out "space savers" with with the 3 to 4 inches of snow we got yesterday, screw them. I'll defend the practice, when one has to actually shovel a space out. Driving your car out in the snow, then plopping down a cone, ain't cricket.
I'm old school.
The cone doesn't represent the space.
It represents the work you put into making the space. So, in this amount of snow, no space savers.
Helping neighbors shovel used to be a thing.
Sigh... this argument is tired.
You got a parking space the night before the storm. The next morning, you put in the work to shovel out your car. You got a space overnight.
Your neighbor didn't get a space, so he paid for a garage space overnight. Now it's the day after the storm. Every single space on the street either has a car in it or was dug out by someone.
When does your neighbor get to park on the street again?
Might I remind you
Parking issues in places like Beacon Hill and the South End are distinct from the parking issues in places like Dorchester and Roslindale.
Only a matter of degree...
Any place where there are more cars than spaces has the same parking issues as the downtown neighborhoods; it's only a matter of degree.
What garages?
What garages?
You have to understand
He lives on Beacon Hill, so he assumes that all of Boston is like Beacon Hill.
Quite the contrary
I understand that every neighborhood is different. But the overwhelming majority of Bostonians live in neighborhoods where there aren't enough parking spaces to go around. Such as, for example, Southie, which is where the worst of the space-saver idiocy seems to happen.
Nope
That describes a very small part of Boston.
And not that that very small part of Boston doesn't matter. It does. But there are no paid parking garages for the car owners of Southie to put their vehicles when it snows. And for a wide swath of the city, from Hyde Park to East Boston to Brighton, the problem is not too many cars for a neighborhood. Beacon Hill parking problems are nowhere near the same as Dorchester parking problems.
Cars don’t have to be parked
Cars don’t have to be parked at the owner’s house at all times. The owner could have been somewhere else during the storm. Or they could have left their car in a garage in another neighborhood and taken the T home.
In fact, the city has a program where dozens of garages and lots offer free or discounted parking during snow emergencies.
Sigh
Every neighborhood in Boston has streets on which no one may park during snow emergencies. The city asks that people who can't get a spot due to this park in free/discounted lots/garages, which exist in every neighborhood.
Are ya new?
https://www.boston.gov/departments/311/snow-emergency-parking
(And yes, I realize no snow emergency was declared for this dusting the other day. Not the point. Every neighborhood has municipal parking, which is presumably where people end up when assholes decide public streets belong to them.)
Nope not new and according to
Nope not new and according to the map there is no garage in my neighborhood.
Your car is allowed to leave
Your car is allowed to leave your neighborhood.
In fact, one might say the entire point of cars is to go places other than where you live.
Reddit ProRevenge...
doesn't come cheap.
In short
In short, isn’t this about the arrogance of car owners who feel it’s their absolute right to use public streets for the parking of their private vehicles ... good grief. Such hubris.
No. Street parking doesn’t
No. Street parking doesn’t occur due to arrogance. It occurs because we as a society decided to allow it because it’s convenient.
Space savers are like
Space savers are like toddlers leaving their toys out. Dockless bikes have more merit. Don’t be a jerk off and claim ownership over public property. Less and and less of the public takes them seriously anyway. Into the trash they go
Y'know
Dockless bikes might make good space savers...
Go for it
Use your credit card to get a dockless bike and leave it on the street overnight.
That's a $1200 space saver.
“Dockless”
They are dockless, which means they aren’t generally locked to a hut Hong, which means you don’t need a credit card to pick them up and move them to another location.
Good thing the city
is allowing so much development with so little parking. This will be more of an issue everywhere.
Have you been in area?
Ever?
In the past 40 years, a triple decker has been put up (in the 1980s) and the greenhouses have been replaced with 8 townhouses with ample parking (in the early 1990s). In short, Ray Flynn is to blame for this development boom.
This citizen has the right idea.
If you can’t beat’em join ‘me. After being woken up too many times by people fighting over whose saved spot it was, I started saving the spot in front of a former home even though I didn’t own a car. It was nice to be able to ride my bike right up to the curb or wave to my neighbors across the street without our being blocked by some giant SUV or monster truck.
As a cyclist, I love how much safer the streets are with fewer parked cars and more spaces taken out of commission. You can’t get doored by a broken beach chair.
The city passed a law in 2013
The city enacted an ordinance in 2013 banning the reserving of parking spaces. The mayor has voiced a policy that space savers are only allowed for 48 hours after a snow emergency.
Neither is enforced. That's a lack of leadership.
That ordinance is news to me.
That ordinance is news to me. Have a cite?
Non issue
The reason why people do this is because we have elderly parents who shouldn't have to walk 3 blocks after shoveling a spot at 85. We live and work as a community and respect those who came before.