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Boston City Council to consider eliminating parking minimums for new development; not all councilors agree, though
By adamg on Wed, 01/08/2025 - 2:27pm
The City Council today agreed to look at eliminating current parking requirements for residential development across the city as a way of spurring new housing - although some councilors vowed to fight the proposal, warning it would destroy Boston's working class and drive low-income residents out of the city.
The city has already ended parking minimums for developments with all "affordable" units; the measure proposed by councilors Sharon Durkan (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Mission Hill, Fenway) and Henry Santana (at large) would extend that to every new residential project.
In recent years, the Boston Planning Department and its predecessors have encouraged developers to submit projects with less parking than required by zoning codes; the Zoning Board of Appeal then typically grants the needed variances.
"Mandatory parking requirements increase housing costs and limit our ability to create the homes our city desperately need," Durkan said, adding developers have told her the need to put in parking is a key reason for expensive development costs.
She said the measure would not mean no parking, but would let the market decide - developments near T stops could be built with less parking, projects in outer areas could get built with more parking. But reducing the pressure to build parking overall would mean more housing, more green space and other amenities and begin to end the city's reliance on cars.
But city councilors Ed Flynn (South Boston, Chinatown, South End, Downtown) and Tania Fernandes Anderson (Roxbury) opposed the idea, saying it would only drive poor people, who don't have the luxury of constant Uber riding, out of Boston.
Pointing specifically to Chinatown, Flynn said, if anything, Boston needs more parking - he said his Chinatown constituents with children are constantly asking him for more parking because they need cars to get their kids to after-school events and to visit family members. "A car is necessary for working-class families in my opinion."
He snorted at the idea that Boston should follow Somerville and Cambridge and work to eliminate parking minimums. "I don't want be like Somerville and Cambridge," he said. "They should be following our lead here in Boston and our lead should be leadership" - and adding more parking.
Fernandes Anderson went further, saying eliminating parking requirements would only exacerbate disparities between white and minority residents, because rich white people in the Back Bay don't really need cars while poorer Black people a few miles away in Roxbury do. "The poorer you are the more you need a car," she said.
She said massive new development in her district, coupled with a planned re-do of Blue Hill Avenue that would create center bus lanes are already contributing to displacement, and, referring to life-expectancy statistics for the Back Bay and Roxbury, "if you're poor, you can die 23 years sooner."
Councilor John FitzGerald (Dorchester) also said he's not a fan of eliminating parking minimums, saying it will only mean more "flushing people out of our city."
Councilor Julia Mejia (at large) did not oppose the measure, but said she would want any measure to ensure that poor people are not hurt. She said she has talked to lower income people in the West End who said they can't really afford their "affordable" housing if they have to pay several hundred dollars a month for parking.
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Comments
It's a good idea but needs to be paired with...
...(Updated) public street parking policy and enforcement.
The residential parking permit system is so freaking broken, and new entrants (new development) is going to increase the wasteful use of poorly regulated street space.
It needs to be managed, metered, and enforced under a system that prices the street space for what it is actually worth.
I drove to work in South Boston for 10 years & recently switched
to the MBTA And I have to say if more people lived in locations near T stations as well as worked near T stations and could also drop their kids off at schools somewhere near home, ideally just a few blocks away, especially ending up at major transit stations like South Station maybe more people could live car free lives and just maybe there would be less stress in the lives of Bostonians plus we would all get more exercise by walking places. This would require the MBTA to be 100% reliable so we aren't there yet though. And some people are just such big control freaks they can't handle being on someone else's schedule and don't like to be on a train with the general public but we can help those individuals with those issue too :)
It is an interesting idea and sadly "let the market decide" means developers can make more profit if they don't need to spend money on parking.
I went to see Cities of the Future at the Museum of Science last Sunday and other cities that were featured in the film - Amsterdam and Indonesia look so much cooler than Boston!
check it out if you get a chance - https://citiesofthefuturefilm.com/
Let the market decide!
That's not at all what that means. It means developers will build parking only if they think people are willing to pay more to have it. Lots of people probably are indeed willing to pay more, but this would decouple parking from housing, so that people not needing a space wouldn't pay for one to satisfy zoning requirements.
"It needs to be managed,
"It needs to be managed, metered, and enforced under a system that prices the street space for what it is actually worth."
This would be the fairest and most efficient way to address street parking. Has any councilor ever proposed anything close to that?
Interestingly, the city decided long ago that if you want to occupy the street for just about any purpose, you should pay $0.10/sqft/day. Not unreasonable, I think. That’s $15 a day or $450 a month for the 150 sqft it takes to park a car on the street. See link below.
The only exception to that rule is if you want to park your private vehicle. On most city streets, it’s $0 and without any limit. How fair is that? That is something I’d like to see the city council discuss someday. I'll make some time over the weekend to email Anderson, Flynn and FitzGerald to get their opinion.
https://www.boston.gov/departments/public-works/new-street-occupancy-per...
Funnily enough, our Mayor,
Funnily enough, our Mayor, during her time as a city councilor, proposed adding a fee to obtain a parking permit. Needless to say, hell was raised and she eventually backed down from the idea.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2019-04-24/boston-city-councilor-wu-prop...
Cambridge and Somerville?
Why on earth would we ever want to follow the lead of Cambridge in Somerville for anything? Perhaps this administration or the City Councilor’s in favor of proposals like this should just turn move to these cities they view as a utopia.
Because they're passing
Because they're passing policies that actually solve problems and improve quality of life?
speculation
coming to the belief that transportation (car travel) for the region is going to be deliberately made so awful that people finally begin demanding proper mass transit. The problem is that we're always 20 years from improvement (esp rail).
Such a disingenuous argument
Everyone I know who lives in Boston does fine without a car. They don't take Uber, they take the T. They prefer to live in the city specifically so they don't need to take a car to get around!
Housing without parking is cheaper so that's where they live.
Stop using low income people as a foil for policies that help mostly the upper classes.
Question
How many of those people have younger children? I can see the 20 somethings to early 30’s easily not needing a car. I did not need one myself growing up but once you add the element of 2 or more young children that changes dramatically especially in a city where there is a good chance the children’s school or day care is not within walking distance from home
Cars and kids
Cars kill more kids than anything besides guns in this country and guns only overtook cars a couple years ago. Stop equating children and cars, it is literally getting them killed.
Plenty of families get by without a car by choice or by necessity.
You've never seen bikes with
You've never seen bikes with child carriers (either seats or trailers)? Or seen people walking with their kids? Or even seen children on bikes? How do you think people got around with their children before cars became the be-all and end-all of transportation?
Funny
As someone who has lived here his entire life, less college, I’d say 95% of people avoid the T at all costs.
Most people from here, in my experience, stop taking the T, unless for a Bruins game, once they get a drivers license.
I take the T, but only because my house and work are within 5 mins walk from a station.
You couldn’t pay me to get on a bus though.
Citation needed
- a person who has lived in this city for going on 20 years and never owned a car and most of whose friends also don't own cars
Easy to find the car ownership rate for Boston
Its upfrom 64% to 66%.
https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/u-s-cities-with-the-highest-an...
I’ve lived here all my life. No one I know takes the T.
Like….*no one*.
We did in our teens and early 20s, then we stopped because we got important jobs and had kids.
I’m OK with eliminating parking requirements. I just don’t like the way that it’s being sold to us. It feels really classist and insensitive to me.
1) That still leaves 1/3rd of
1) That still leaves 1/3rd of Bostonians without cars. Presumably they find other means of transportation, including the T?
2) You and your friends are not "everyone". You all may have chosen to buy cars and abandon the T, but there are plenty of people - even people with kids and "important jobs"! - who own cars and take the T as the situation demands.
3) In what ways is this "classist and insensitive"? It keeps getting thrown around and it's never been explained clearly.
It's quite simple - removing parking minimums increases the ability to build housing, which will lower housing costs, thus making it possible for a greater number of people, including those who don't make tons of finance/IT money, to live close to the city. This benefits /everyone/, except those who refuse to even entertain the idea of sharing a transportation method with "the public".
It’s very simple
You grow up in Boston you get an old hamme down car no payments, low insurance payment
I never said me and my my friends were everyone. You just put that misdirection in there for your own argument.
But I’ll play along you and all your friends that don’t use the car in are fine or not everyone either In fact, it looks like you’re the minority. Hmm.
It’s very classist because it ignores the obvious fact that outer areas are much more poorly and sparsely served by rapid transit—that’s why they’re affordable in the first place… if they were well served by rapid transit, they would be expensive
^ if That’s too hard to understand I really don’t know what to tell you
So 2/3 of the city can pound sand?
Look, I'm part of that 2/3, even though I'm not one of the 38.9% of Bostonians who get to work via car, truck, or van (apologies if the link doesn't work.) The reality is that in South Boston and in a lot of parts of Boston, parking for residents has become an issue. Perhaps there is a place between mandating that every new development has a space per unit and just letting anything be built without any parking and let the chips fall where they may.
I’m from here.
I don’t know who you hang out with or why you have that weird world view. But you sound massively out of touch or trapped in some cult that believes the T is the work of the devil.
TheT sucks
Anyone that relies on it, unfortunately doesn’t have a choice, which sucks. All and I mean all of my friends in Boston avoid the T like the plague and most own multiple cars (suv, sports cars, etc).
You and your friends
sound like suburbanites. That's fine, just don't mess up Boston for those of us who actually live here.
Seaport, South Station, Dorchester, etc
Where do you live?
You live in all these places?
Okay, I can list various neighborhoods, too. Kenmore/Fenway, Allston, Brighton, Roslindale. Never needed a car in any of these locations.
I frequently have the choice.
Friends with cars will often offer me rides home after hanging out. 99% of the time I say no because I’m rarely on the way home for them.
Because, as well, I don’t care to add to congestion, pollution and noise to my city. But most of all because the T is safer, faster and more interesting.
What dull isolated lives you obsessive drivers must have. Not to mention the side effects of car brain.
You’ve never experienced
9000rpm wailing away behind your head if you think sports cars are dull.
Isolated? Where can the T take you? Guess where my cars can take me.
Car brain in action.
You’re isolated because you don’t interact with the general public sealed up and enclosed in your fiberglass exoskeleton.
Also have to wonder what "from here" means,
because I'm guessing it means from some suburb north of the city.
Sometimes I wonder what would
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if people were required to state what town they live in now. Maybe they'd get a little flag that says "Within 95" "Boston Proper", "Between 95 and 495", "Outside 495", "Out of State". How many of these "The T is awful" types live within the T's service zone, do you think?
And even Uber is less expensive than car ownership
Unless you are using it to commute on a daily basis, occasional use of Uber for convenience is less than the cost of a car payment + insurance + gas + a parking space. That last one is something Ed and Tania don't seem to realize is a cost, and they seem to ignore most of the rest of it. Paying thousands of dollars a year for something you use for maybe 10% of your time when there are much less expensive alternatives is some sort of strange mania.
How many of them have kids&live outside of Boston Proper/Seaport
@Bostondog - It seems like a huge challenge to have kids and not own a car.
Also living anywhere not on a subway line or in Boston Proper seems like a major challenge.
I don't know many people that live in the Hyde Park, Dedham, Roslindale or Mattapan area that don't have a car.
I wish it weren't this way and I am beyond excited for when the Fairmount line get's electrified and hopefully allows lots of families living along it in Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester and Hyde Park to get rid of their car.
American cities rely so heavily on cars sadly and it's been that way since the 1950s I believe.
Hopefully it swings back in the other direction.
Please tell us how they are accomplishing this - are they also all WFH?
People who work night shifts or places not easily reached by T
Anyone with a night job with a shift that begins or ends during the night needs a car unless they can afford to live walking distance from work. So do people whose jobs aren't easily T-accessible from where they live or require visiting multiple locations/day.
I got my driver's license and first car when I lost my job and the only one I found was out in Burlington, not walkable from commuter rail. The spoke-and-wheel layout and ridiculous schedules for many buses and commuter rail mean that a fairly short distance can take 1-2 hours by public transit. When my kid was in college 6 miles from home, it would have taken them 2 hours to get home by public transit while it was a 10 minute drive.
Never knew I needed a car.
What I can’t walk or take T to, I bike, taxi or rent or borrow a car. Used to hitchhike when younger but no one does that anymore, unfortunately.
No thanks on owning a car.
unfortunately, Tania is right- for the most part
A lot of people who are paid well don’t realize how privileged they are to not have a car in Boston
I come from the high Park and Mattapan and Rosendale and West Roxbury and Dorchester areas
Families and people who live in those areas try to avoid public transit as much as possible because Forrest it doesn’t work the same way it does for Sharon Durkin or for you
The reality is, Boston has an extremely model, and it really only works for people who are well educated enough to work in downtown areas and can afford the exorbitant rent prices when they live in transit neighborhoods
Now to counter Tanya’s point in the further neighborhood that includes Roxbury there generally is ample street parking. It’s really not a big issue. So I’m not opposed to eliminating parking requirements, but she’s absolutely spot on about. It’s really a privilege that mostly our young white citizen gets to enjoy.
I’m gonna assume most of your Circle is young and if not white they’re probably transplanted. Boston is deeply socially in lifestyle wise, and I wouldn’t expect most people in this comment section to really understand.
"our lead should be leadership"
Finally, something I agree with Ed Flynn about. I hope he decides to try this leadership thing instead of the clown act¹ he's been so dedicated to.
I can't imagine anybody looking at parking minimums from a Southie perspective and thinking "yea, this is good, we should do more of this", let alone Chinatown.
¹ with apologies to clowns
parking
I do not agree with eliminating parking minimums.
The city's Squares and Streets initiative is bringing density into town centers. The city can pretend people do not own/use cars anymore, but they are. Where will they go?
Riding bikes, if I ever thought of doing that the monthly cyclist severely injured report keeps me away.
Readville and HP have 500+ housing units coming soon, less than half will have parking. I have read the commuter rail is reliable from Readville and
Fairmont, and a $deal$.
How are parking minimums determined?
Have you ever asked yourself that? The history of them is that they were basically pulled out of a hat rather than based on any kind of well understood need. The host of this video is a bit annoying, but the information on how we got to have today's parking minimums is interesting.
If you're going to have parking minimums it should have a basis in a genuinely calculated need. Factors such as the density and type of housing, availability of basic needs within walking distance, proximity to public transportation, local population demographics and more all impact whether and how many people in a particular area need or will have a car.
Ignoring those factors and implementing a zoning ordinance with a blanket requirement for a set number of parking spaces per unit for any new building in the city makes no sense.
Without that ordinance what are the choices? One is to add more to the byzantine zoning laws of the city by making or requiring those calculations for every neighborhood and continuing to require a zoning variant for any project that doesn't meet them. The other is to let the developers determine the need for parking based on those above parameters and with the financial calculation for their project.
When you think of it in context then eliminating parking minimums seems like the best option.
They are not proposing a ban on parking
There is no ban on parking being proposed. The goal is to give potential homeowners the choice of spending extra to get parking or saving money and skipping parking.
Good
I was hoping this would happen. Parking garages are a huge construction expense that don’t generate returns for developers (at least not returns as great as if it was livable space). Parking minimums make housing more expensive, and getting around them is another place the zoning board can butt in and interfere with sorely needed development.
I can’t say I’m surprised about the names of the detractors; I would recommend that they stop mistaking cars for the constituents that they are failing through their opposition.
Bullshit
I make a lot less than most people in this city and couldn't afford a car even if I wanted one. The whole reason I love the city is not being burdened with car ownership; between the costs of payments, insurance, and upkeep, my last car cost hundreds a month—and that was to insure a 15-year-old wagon in the suburbs.
Can't wait till that chicken
Can't wait till that chicken comes home to roost,
Pretending for a moment that
Pretending for a moment that public transit doesn't exist... if Ed Flynn wants more parking, he should be encouraging developers to build garages.
In a place like Chinatown, there will never be enough street parking for residents, workers, and visitors, so garages are necessary and have been for decades. If the market shows that we need more garage space, more can be built.
In a place like Roxbury, the argument is that new residents in new buildings with no parking displace existing residents who use street parking. If that's happening, the solution is the same: build a garage! Even if it were possible to park along every inch of curb in Roxbury there still wouldn't be enough room for everybody to park, and we're adding new residents while we can't add new street parking because we can stack residents vertically. When parking is stacked vertically, it's called a garage.
The city could build a new city-owned garage near Nubian and give local residents as big a discount as it wants. Heck, it could pay residents to park there rather than on the street.
This is a solvable problem and the solution doesn't involve disingenuously using parking as a brake on residential development.
but but but...
Multistory parking garages are such an eyesore! They bring property values down! we could NEVER.
/s
Reminds me of all the people who complain about there being "no parking" in Malden Center when there are 3 public parking garages within two blocks of each other (in addition to the 3 surface lots not much farther away)
Flynn and Anderson are just so out of touch …
… with reality on this.
Previous commenters have already explained why more eloquently than I could.
To quote a minor mafiosi I used to know, what a couple of bananaheads!!!
Conversely
Two city councilors who are usually diametrically opposed on issues agree on this. Perhaps they listen to their constituents and are speaking for them.
Several commenters have explained the issues, but alas, some people are just out of touch on this.
Poor people and cars
Poor people are really significantly less likely to own cars than more affluent people. Same goes for those living in affordable housing units. Mandating parking makes housing more expensive and often results in unused parking spaces. A study from the MAPC found that parking is already significantly overbuilt in the Boston area.
Using poor people to defend car centric thinking that makes housing more expensive is tokenizing and cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Kickback Tania ...
Has spoken...
Oy vey. Sowing disaster.
Oy vey. Sowing disaster. Sowing and promoting an underclass. These folks are going to have kids, grow old and will do so without the benefit of 24/7 access to mobility unless they’re unencumbered by family and bad health and have the luxury of summoning an indentured Uber contractor. My fellow Democrats have really moved on from the “we get it” tour and back it.
Progressivism in Massachusetts is a scam, a front, a tool wielded by wealthy elites and the oligarchy. The Democratic Party is a party allowing itself to be held hostage.
The idea of raising the boats of a few by the relative lowering everyone else's boats is raising nobody’s boat.
Carville’s “three things” are flawed; it’s about much more than just the economy.
reading comprehension
You get that they are not banning parking??
Unequal treatment. A
Unequal treatment. A restriction is sufficient to prevent unequal access to a neighborhood. A restriction creates exclusion and applies selective pressure to benefit the biking class. The fraction of Bay Staters who don’t drive may not be aware of the cost of their lost opportunities had they a car.
This has always been
a racist ploy to take car ownership from minorities and working class people. Government did this years ago in New Orleans. Bicyclists can say it’s about the environment or healthy alternative but this bs hides the real racism behind it.
You do realize that many working class people…
…. and minorities know how to ride a bike and do so.
The ones taking away car ownership are the dealerships that new sell cars to people who can’t afford them and miss car payments.
The worst investment you can make is a new car.
Yea but
A lot of people who are paid well don’t realize how privileged they are to not have a car in Boston
I come from the high Park and Mattapan and Rosendale and West Roxbury and Dorchester areas
Families and people who live in those areas try to avoid public transit as much as possible because Forrest it doesn’t work the same way it does for Sharon Durkin or for you
The reality is, Boston has an extremely model, and it really only works for people who are well educated enough to work in downtown areas and can afford the exorbitant rent prices when they live in transit neighborhoods
Now to counter Tanya’s point in the further neighborhood that includes Roxbury there generally is ample street parking. It’s really not a big issue. So I’m not opposed to eliminating parking requirements, but she’s absolutely spot on about. It’s really a privilege that mostly our young white citizenry gets to enjoy.
The reality is 65% of Boston households on a car and that number is not decreasing in fact it’s increasing.
Even if it’s not racist, which honestly it might be it’s at least very racially, and socioeconomically ignorant, tone deaf, and indifferent
chinatown needs parking like florida needs ski resorts
if you want to live in the densest neighborhood you probably shouldn't expect parking anymore than you should expect good skiing if you move to Florida. There are some nice aspects to living downtown and living in Florida but also tradeoffs inherent in the niceness. You can't have warm weather and skiing, you can't have density and infinite parking.
Chinatown needs car free streets.
And some safer bike parking.
Chinatown is well served with public transportation choices.
Much of Chinatown has sidewalks too narrow to accommodate all the people on foot and forget about delivery parking!