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Could Car Sharing Help Ease Boston's Parking Woes?
ResumeIn an effort to reduce the pressure on parking and driving downtown, the city of Boston is considering a counter-intuitive move: reduce the number of public parking spaces.
The idea is to sell off as many as 230 of the city's public parking spaces to private car-share companies like Zipcar and Enterprise CarShare.
The goal is to convince more people to ditch their own wheels and share a car, which would reduce the number of cars on the roads and, in theory, ease some of the pressure on parking.
Guests
Marc Draisen, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Area Planning Council and a former state representative from Boston and Brookline. MAPC tweets @MAPCMetroBoston.
Mike Lloyd, representative of the Concord Square Neighborhood Association for the South End Forum.
More
Boston.com: City's New Car Sharing Program At Least Trying Not to Ruin Parking for Everyone
- “I think people feel very strongly about parking in Boston,” [Kris Carter, director of programming in Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics] said. “Before people actually saw the details of the RFP, initially it feels a little bit scary. When you get into the details it seems like something that can be done.”
The Boston Globe: Unlimited Permits Strain Boston's Parking System
- "Unlike many other large cities, Boston offers residents a parking permit for every car they own — with no limit on the number held by each household. As of January, there were nearly 94,000 residential permits in Boston, an increase of nearly one-fourth since 2006."
The Boston Globe: Parking in Boston Can't Be Both Ample and Free
- "What City Hall needs to do is treat the shortage as the basic economics problem that it is. There’s exactly one way to solve Boston’s parking woes: by giving up the pretense that, in a city of 13,000 people per square mile, parking can be both ample and free."
This segment aired on February 9, 2015.