Park and Pray

The trend in both Boston and Cambridge is obvious - rip up the iron maiden-esque parking meters of old and replace them with multi-space, computerized, robo-meters - the network of which we can only assume will expand until they’ve succeeded in erecting some kind of street-side hive mind that will one day sell our parking habits to advertisers on google and decrease our credit rating a point per minute when our cars overstay their paid welcome. To this end, the city of Boston just recently announced the purchase of 63 new multi-space meters to assimilate the Back Bay.

These devices, even at their navy-purchasing-toilet-seats price of $10,000 per unit, have the bean counters at city hall in a frenzy since they’ve discovered that these robo-meters can produce upwards of 35% more income per space than their steel counterparts by accepting credit card payments (minimum $2 in Boston), preventing parkers from ‘time-sharing’ spaces, eliminating space-splitting by motorcycles, and minimizing the work necessary for meter funds collection. For the consumer, Continue reading…

Parking Wars Parking Glossary

A&E has runs a show on the lives of parking enforcers in Philadelphia. The show’s website, however, includes parking tips for various other cities including Boston. The site is also home to their parking glossary.

Flipping through this attempt at a Webster’s of city-parking reveals two contributions from our hub of the universe. First, Parking Markers as the famed winter ritual of old radiators, furniture, and trash bins in self-reserved snowy-street spaces. Second:

Parking Violation: In most cities, the act of parking illegally; in Boston, the act of stopping one’s car

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Nobody likes searching for a place to put their car. In Boston, where a 24/7 off-street space can run upwards of $300/month (or more for a covered garage), street parking remains the only option for many residents already stripped of the better part of their month’s income by increasing apartment costs and the always-rising general cost of living in the city. Although having one’s own vehicle may seem less crucial with the growing push for alternative transportation options, car ownership continues to increase in the city and it has been projected that in some Boston neighborhoods today, actual parking spaces account for only a fifth of the number of stickers issued.

To those of us who live the great urban parking experience each day, finding a nighttime home for our beloved car in these asphalt jungles can be a nightmare waiting to happen.

To be clear, it’s a chess game- the techniques of which for effective spot-pouncing are as varied as the vehicles that probe the blacktops in search of their little slice of curb each evening. Such a game has brought to view a number of common approaches to reaching one’s goal. I call this cross section of the parking public…

The Five City Parkers You Meet in Hell

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