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Hey Mahty, guess what? This is Boston, not San Francisco. We remembah. You got millions to give real estate developers in tax credits for luxury condos, but you gotta quintuple the chahge ta commutahs ovah night? What a chowdahead.
Sounds great! Rich people park wherever they want. Poor people can't commute to their office cleaning jobs by car ever again because you're charging almost minimum wage per hour to park...
Oh, but it's better, because you never know how much they'll charge you where or when. It changes at whim. There's no way to predict it. So you better carry $40 in quarters on you at all times just in case you have 4 or 5 hours business in the city in a few different spots...no more making sure you have a couple rolls for the week...
Or you better have a major credit card, if they get the new card meters in everywhere on time...
Utterly ridiculous.
Rich people willing to pay $14 bucks for two hours already have plenty of garaged options for their fancy BMWs.
Now we're just ceding the public spaces to them too...
Hopefully not without a fight.
Boston's becoming more and more like the Bay Area every day.
It's awful.
Marty Walsh parking plan blasted: 7 bucks per hour to feed a meter?
Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s plan to jack up parking meter fees as high as $7 an hour on busy streets is being lambasted by retailers and residents, who say it will penalize people who live here, drive away customers and make it impossible to do business.
“Why are they always picking on the people?” asked Pam Donna*ruma, publisher of the Boston Post-Gazette and a longtime North End leader. “It’s all about making money off of the working people ... You’re talking about middle-class people who want to come into the city. They’re the ones who are always getting hurt by these increases.”
Walsh unveiled the proposed parking meter rate hikes at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce annual breakfast yesterday, saying they are aimed at reducing congestion from people circling the block to look for cheaper, on-street parking, and mirror higher meter prices in other major U.S. cities.
The mayor said he anticipated pushback on the idea and asked people to hold off until he comes up with a formal plan.
But at least one city business leader couldn’t wait to voice her outrage.
“More and more, some businesses and people are choosing to stay away from Beacon Hill because of how challenging it is to find parking, alongside how easy it is to get a parking ticket,” said Nina Castellion of the Beacon Hill Business Association. “We’d encourage the mayor to implement parking plans that work to reverse this trend.”
Walsh’s chief of the streets, Chris Osgood, said the proposal is partly inspired by the policy in San Francisco, where meter rates fluctuate from less than $1 per hour to as high as $7 per hour. The Hub, Osgood said, will study the idea the rest of the year as the city also rolls out newer “smart” parking meters capable of variable pricing.
If the Hub decides to go ahead with the plan, *Osgood said it would likely be put in place by winter 2016.
John Koltun, a wrestling coach at Milton Academy, said he doubted Hub residents would stand for an increase that could raise the current $1.25-an-hour rate almost sixfold.
“I think it’s a half an hour for a quarter in Dedham, whereas it’s only 12 minutes in Boston, so any type of rate increase would seem outrageous to me,” Koltun said. “I don’t think that they will increase it. I think there’ll be too much of a backlash from people because I think it’s already so outrageously expensive as it is.”
Walsh highlighted certain high-traffic streets where parking can be especially tight as prime targets for higher meter prices.
“Fenway, Back Bay, areas like that,” he said. “There are not a lot of meters downtown, but you are getting more and more people going there ... It’s an option on the table.”
San Francisco launched so-called dynamic pricing for parking in 2011. In seven pilot neighborhoods, per-hour parking prices were increased or decreased — from 25 cents to $7.00 — until the blocks were 60 percent to 80 percent full.
A review of San Francisco’s program released in June said on-street meter rates dropped on average by 4 percent; blocks were full 16 percent less often; and the average time spent looking for parking dropped by almost half.
Some local business leaders *applauded Walsh’s proposal, which they say would deter people working in the city from parking at meters, and free up spaces for people coming to Boston to shop, eat and attend events.
...
Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s plan to jack up parking meter fees as high as $7 an hour on busy streets is being lambasted by retailers and residents, who say it will penalize people who live here, drive away customers and make it impossible to do business.
“Why are they always picking on the people?” asked Pam Donna*ruma, publisher of the Boston Post-Gazette and a longtime North End leader. “It’s all about making money off of the working people ... You’re talking about middle-class people who want to come into the city. They’re the ones who are always getting hurt by these increases.”
Walsh unveiled the proposed parking meter rate hikes at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce annual breakfast yesterday, saying they are aimed at reducing congestion from people circling the block to look for cheaper, on-street parking, and mirror higher meter prices in other major U.S. cities.
The mayor said he anticipated pushback on the idea and asked people to hold off until he comes up with a formal plan.
But at least one city business leader couldn’t wait to voice her outrage.
“More and more, some businesses and people are choosing to stay away from Beacon Hill because of how challenging it is to find parking, alongside how easy it is to get a parking ticket,” said Nina Castellion of the Beacon Hill Business Association. “We’d encourage the mayor to implement parking plans that work to reverse this trend.”
Walsh’s chief of the streets, Chris Osgood, said the proposal is partly inspired by the policy in San Francisco, where meter rates fluctuate from less than $1 per hour to as high as $7 per hour. The Hub, Osgood said, will study the idea the rest of the year as the city also rolls out newer “smart” parking meters capable of variable pricing.
If the Hub decides to go ahead with the plan, *Osgood said it would likely be put in place by winter 2016.
John Koltun, a wrestling coach at Milton Academy, said he doubted Hub residents would stand for an increase that could raise the current $1.25-an-hour rate almost sixfold.
“I think it’s a half an hour for a quarter in Dedham, whereas it’s only 12 minutes in Boston, so any type of rate increase would seem outrageous to me,” Koltun said. “I don’t think that they will increase it. I think there’ll be too much of a backlash from people because I think it’s already so outrageously expensive as it is.”
Walsh highlighted certain high-traffic streets where parking can be especially tight as prime targets for higher meter prices.
“Fenway, Back Bay, areas like that,” he said. “There are not a lot of meters downtown, but you are getting more and more people going there ... It’s an option on the table.”
San Francisco launched so-called dynamic pricing for parking in 2011. In seven pilot neighborhoods, per-hour parking prices were increased or decreased — from 25 cents to $7.00 — until the blocks were 60 percent to 80 percent full.
A review of San Francisco’s program released in June said on-street meter rates dropped on average by 4 percent; blocks were full 16 percent less often; and the average time spent looking for parking dropped by almost half.
Some local business leaders *applauded Walsh’s proposal, which they say would deter people working in the city from parking at meters, and free up spaces for people coming to Boston to shop, eat and attend events.
...
Oh, but it's better, because you never know how much they'll charge you where or when. It changes at whim. There's no way to predict it. So you better carry $40 in quarters on you at all times just in case you have 4 or 5 hours business in the city in a few different spots...no more making sure you have a couple rolls for the week...
Or you better have a major credit card, if they get the new card meters in everywhere on time...
Utterly ridiculous.
Rich people willing to pay $14 bucks for two hours already have plenty of garaged options for their fancy BMWs.
Now we're just ceding the public spaces to them too...
Hopefully not without a fight.
Boston's becoming more and more like the Bay Area every day.
It's awful.
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