Crowdsourcing where you can't park
By adamg - 6/14/12 - 8:25 am
Ryan Sawyer has started a project to map all the streets in the Boston area that are limited to people with resident-only stickers or otherwise restricted. He's set up a map on which you can add restricted streets, says:
I completed the entire city of Medford (since the parking restricted streets were readily available on the MPD's website), but the other towns/neighborhoods like Boston, Allston/Brighton, Cambridge, etc are not as easy to track down.
Ed. note: Hmm, in the winter, he could add streets where people put out crap to save spaces.
Comments
Sundays...
He's pretty adamant about the "24/7, 365" limitations, except many (most?) cities lift the resident permit restriction on Sundays/holidays. Mentioning which cities have that policy would make the map more useful.
Second Look
I did a deeper dive on the map and noticed that some people coded streets as allowing parking on certain times/days, but listed the Sunday "amnesty" as the only open time for nonresidents to park. That ends up making the information useless, if most cities -- like Boston, Somerville & Cambridge -- have a universal open day on Sundays. Every street would be coded purple on this map and you'd have to spend time figuring out where you could park close to your destination on a Wednesday.
Once I can confirm which
Once I can confirm which cities and towns DO lift the Sunday restrictions, I'll make a note of that in the map's description. Something like "The following towns have no resident/permit restrictions on Sundays: town1, town2, town3, etc". That way, people won't have to go labeling all of the streets with purple if the only allowance is Sundays.
Sunday amnesty?
I don't know of any Sunday amnesty on resident parking only in Boston. Couldn't find any mention of such on the city's website, and the signs on my street don't mention anything either.
My Bad...
You are probably right ... I was equating the open meter situation in Boston on Sundays/holidays with parking in residential areas. I think it varies a lot based on part of town, but I'll let others do that.
I do know that Somerville and Cambridge specifically say on their signs that residential permit parking is not enforced on Sundays. Somerville's also mention holidays, but Cambridge's do not (and I found nothing on the city web site).
Hi folks, Ryan here! Since a
Hi folks, Ryan here! Since a lot of the restricted parking info for cities/towns ISN'T available online (I'm sure the local governments don't want me cutting into their ticket-writing revenue), I'm relying on people using the map to enter info about their own streets and neighborhoods. Even if you can just do one or two streets, it'd be incredibly helpful! :)
p.s.- R_Hookup's got a good point, I think many places DO lift the restrictions on Sundays. I've removed the "24/7, 365 days" from the description until we can figure out which towns do and do not have Sunday restrictions.
Also, whoever added the long,
Also, whoever added the long, winding purple line in the Cambridge/West Cambridge area: can you please add what the allowances are as notes? We need to know if it's only restricted on certain sides of the street, or certain times of the day, or whatnot. Ideally, we want people to be able to click on a line so that a window will come up that says the name of the street and when the restrictions are (like "Mon-Fri, 7am-7pm").
Medford far from complete
There's way more stuff in Medford that's permit-only than is listed on that map. A lot of the streets off the Fellsway, for instance, and a lot of the streets around Main and Harvard Sts.
I was just going by the
I was just going by the Medford Police Department's listing of restricted streets on their website, but if you know of some specific streets that have restrictions, please feel free to add them to the map! :)
Nice work Ryan
but....Brainerd Rd. in Allston isn't resident parking for most of the street.
I didn't do that one, I've
I didn't do that one, I've only worked on the Medford area. Unfortunately, that's one of the problems with crowd-sourced, anyone-can-edit projects like this. However, if you know the correct permit parking restrictions on that road, please feel free to adjust/edit the existing entry. :)
http://primospot.com has the
http://primospot.com has the inner neighborhoods of Boston and the eastern half of Cambridge. It's not crowdsourced, but you can submit corrections.
I just added parking in my
I just added parking in my neighborhood. I think it might be a little easier on the eyes if it was a different color combo than purple and red - while they aren't that similar, it might be easier to read.
DISLIKE
My neighborhood is all free/nonpermit parking. We're also right by a subway station and really close to other cool stuff. I'd rather that people other than my friends and family NOT figure this out. ;-)