Councilor: Time to raise parking fines around Fenway Park

The random availability of parking spots was why I didn't have a car until I had a place to put it off street. Particularly when I had to commute home from my summer job in the evenings, when there were no spaces due to the Red Sox games.

The Red Sox parking can get pretty strange sometimes. Once the Sox started winning, it became a tow-fest on game days. People would block hydrants, crosswalks, intersections ...

It got particularly crazy during championships. People were knocking on doors trying to get deals on private parking, and many of the MIT Independent/Frat living groups found ways to oblige them by moving student vehicles elsewhere and charging what seemed like exorbitant rates for cramming in the back lots. It was amazing what people from NYC would pay to be close by. If nobody was there to conduct business or wave people off, people would just park in your driveway without permission and leave. It was crazy.

Of course, this could now be handled with an app ... but these are the issues that people who live in the area have to contend with during baseball season and I can see why they would be fed up.

Now, at those times I actually drive to work in Boston, I park in the "mud lots" at private prices or a four hour meter. Then I get to see the "work space savers" get in arguments with the people who actually live in Fort Point.

As my name implies, I don't either. But my GF does, and the 3 visitor spots near her are ALWAYS taken. It's annoying, but fair. The same system (theoretically) keeps people from parking in my neighborhood and jumping on a plane to avoid airport parking fees. The system giveth, and the system taketh.

I do wish Boston would build a better visitor parking system, something like Somerville's for instance, but it's tough in some neighborhoods where spots are already limited.

Well, first, Kenmore Square != the Fenway. The distinction may not mean anything to you as someone who doesn't live there, but it's rather like "Allston/Brighton", a meaningless amalgamation. They're physically separated by the Mass Pike, Fenway Park and the urban mall that Boylston Street has become; they're not one contiguous neighborhood. Next, walking around Kenmore Square will give you a widely varying impression of who "lives" there, depending on when you do your walking around and how blind you are to minor influencing factors like that loud building just up the hill. And then there's the fact that the Fenway is quite different from Kenmore Square. So, if you are going on superficial impressions rather than data, ok, but I think you're wrong. Derp.

That somebody who lives in Brighton leaves their car in a garage for two weeks while we wait for Warren St. to get cleared?

I think some go to Florida. In the summer it is easier to park as a lot more go to the cape or Maine, or if they are students they go home.

It's asinine that there's no limited-use guest permits issued to people like there are in Somerville and Cambridge

Since there are not enough spaces for the residents (by a ratio of something like 4 to 5 permitted vehicles per on-street space, through our government, which we elect, we have decided that issuing guest permits isn't something we want to do. The people in Somerville and Cambridge, perhaps with a different set of numbers or a different set of usage patterns, have made a different choice. Our choice is by no means "asinine," it's a perfectly reasonable decision in the face of an extremely scarce resource.

With real estate in the crowded neighborhoods selling for $1,000 per square foot, I am not very optimistic that charging $25, $75, or $250 per year per permit is really going to reduce the number out there by more than a few percentage points. It's nearly impossible to price them high enough to discourage excessive use, without screwing people who are, say, earning a middle class income, living in subsidized housing and barely getting by.

I'd sure hate to live in your utopia, where the smallest oversight can result in a crippling fine.

Hahahaha, this really makes me laugh. In my "utopia", as you call it (and I do not think that word means what you think it means), I've made mistakes and I've paid the price. I once failed to note that I was parking my car on an emergency snow artery the night before a major snowstorm. My mistake, and I paid for it. I really wish I'd had you along that day to flail your Muppet arms and rant about how it was a "simple mistake" and I shouldn't be levied with a "crippling fine" plus towing and storage charges. I'm sure it would have made a big impression and been highly effective.

Alas, you weren't with me on that day, and so what I did was put on my big kid pants and deal with the consequences of my mistake. I suggest you learn to do the same. Little kiddies rant about "fairness" in situations where they made a mistake and were penalized. Grownups realize that "fairness" applies to situations where the rules aren't fairly applied. If you can point to a situation where you weren't parked illegally and you got dinged for it, then you can complain about how unfair it all is.

For street cleaning, it's not that adults are willfully parking where they're not supposed to. People park legally, but then forget to move their car days later when they're supposed to.

But the real problem here is not about responsibility. When you get towed, of course it's (usually) your fault. The problem is that towing is horribly inefficient. Of the $$$ and hours of aggravation lost by the person getting towed, the city only gets $$. The remaining $$$ difference doesn't fairly balance out the value of sweeping debris from 100 square feet of asphalt. Most of that $$$ just goes to waste.

Both the city and drivers would be better off raising the cost of the ticket by 20 bucks, ending enforcement by towing, and using the extra money to clean under cars with brooms and blowers.