City councilor calls for addressing parking woes
A city councilor says Boston needs to have a conversation about how to deal with parking problems, but his call for more city parking lots to help local businesses goes against current planning ideas, according to an expert.
District 3 Councilor Frank Baker has called for a public hearing Oct. 3, saying the city should review its parking policies and investigate creating business parking permits. But the city “should also be planning business districts that create more parking structures and/or municipal lots to accommodate customers and encourage residents to shop locally,” according to his order.
Baker said the hearing’s purpose is to start a broad conversation without making any immediate proposals and that he was open to all ideas. But parking for businesses was a concern, he said, saying the city and state could creatively use their land as a resource for more parking.
“How do we provide some parking for business locations?” he said. “Everything doesn’t have to be just housing, in the design of any place should be a mix of all different things.”
But current thinking in urban planning is that cities have too much parking already, and people looking for spaces drives up congestion, said Alan Altshuler, a Harvard University professor of urban policy and Massachusetts’ first secretary of transportation. He said increasing parking prices and structuring them to flux with demand is considered a better solution.
“If you create a lot of parking, people will use it and therefore attract a lot more traffic than you would otherwise, it doesn’t necessarily improve business,” Altshuler said. “It doesn’t mean you should never build parking, but be careful.”
Boston Transportation Department spokeswoman Tracey Ganiatsos said the city partners with local Main Streets organizations to help customers find parking and that city officials are working on the long-term transportation plan Go Boston 2030, which is set to be released later this fall, as a more comprehensive policy for traveling and parking.