Brookline Newcomer

Some solutions to our parking problem

At last week's Brookline Village forum organized by the Commercial Areas Parking Committee, the presenters and the audience proposed a range of possible solutions to the parking space scarcity outside Brookline stores. I got the feeling, though, that there wasn't much expectation that the outcome this time will be any different than it was after earlier efforts to grapple with the problem. Parking will remain scarce, storeowners will complain that would-be customers can't park, and residents without their own driveways will resent the fact that the town's latest parking crusade doesn't even pretend to address the problems of people who actually live here.

Parking garages may get built someday in Brookline Village and Coolidge Corner, but it's hard to know if these will actually resolve the problem or merely attract more cars. Some 10-hour parking meters might get changed to 2-hour meters to discourage commuters from hogging the spots. Some 2-hour meters might become 15- or 30-minute meters to save spots for people who just need to pick up their dry cleaning or run in someplace for a sandwich. All these efforts might help.

But what we really need is to cut down on the number of people who drive into Brookline everyday.

As emphasized at the forum, the main problem in the commercial areas stems from storeowners and their employees who drive to work and feed parking meters all day, making those meters unavailable to customers. Since meter feeding is illegal, more enforcement would help, until the cops tire of staring at parking meters all day.

The town has asked storeowners to encourage employees to take the T to work, but asking isn't enough. Even if some employees cooperate, it only takes a few holdouts to fill the scarce spots.

Perhaps it's time to go further. One possibility: make employee transit use a requirement for anyone doing business in Brookline, with a parking tax on businesses based on the number of employees who drive to work. This might give storeowners an incentive to subsidize employee T passes. You'd think losing business because customers can't park would be enough of an incentive, but that's only true if every storeowner participates so that no one benefits unfairly from the subsidies offered by everyone else.

Another possibiity: the town itself could subsidize T passes directly. Why not just give free passes to employees who agree to leave their cars at home? Expensive, yes, but more enforcement--and that new parking tax--should cover the costs.

But subsidies aren't enough. T passes won't help employees who don't live near a convenient bus or train. So we need to do more, perhaps setting up a shuttle service that could supplement the town's bus lines. This would also help residents get out of town, and get around town, without adding more cars to the clogged streets.

My point is that we need to think beyond relatively minor solutions that are unlikely to resolve the problem. Confronting the parking scarcity requires more than just going over the same old ground yet again.

It also requires throwing residential parking into the mix. It was clear at last week's parking forum that at least some residents resent the lack of attention to their own parking problems. The overnight parking ban, the two-hour daytime parking limit on residential streets, the no-parking rules between 7 and 9 a.m. on many streets--these are constant irritants for many Brookline residents. Hearing at the forum that enforcement in commercial areas is minimal adds to the annoyance of those of us who repeatedly get tickets in front of our own homes.

So when will there be a Residential Areas Parking Forum? In neighborhoods such as Brookline Village, where commercial parking encroaches on residential streets, resident willingness to accommodate customers and employees is crucial. That willingness is likely to be dampened so long as the town fails to take their needs into account.

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