parking

Among other things, the declaration means you can't park on a snow-emergency route, but otherwise you can use a cone, chair, fan, toilet or stuffed animal to save a space on the street for up to 48 hours after the snow emergency officially ends.

Use this city mapping system to find out which of your local roads double as snow emergency routes and where you can park at a discount (with a resident parking sticker on your car).

Although maybe it helps when you say you're from the Boston Transportation Department. In any case, somebody complained about somebody else saving a space on Henchman Street in the North End with a traffic cone. A city minion marked the case closed tonight:

[T]old resident to remove cone and did.

Remember when people only saved spaces in the winter? An aggrieved citizen reports from Samoset Street in Dorchester:

More parking cones. Doesn't seem to be getting the message.

A concerned citizen reported this situation on South Street:

Chair used to save a parking space nearly every day.

The city wasted little time dealing with this complaint:

Closed. Case Resolved. Chair removed.

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.

A Suffolk Superior Court jury today convicted Carmen Andino of Mission Hill for stabbing a neighbor in a dispute over a parking space the neighbor had shoveled out but Andino then claimed, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Andino, 40, will be sentenced on May 9, the DA's office reports. Andino's daughter was acquitted of charges she helped her mother in the attack.

Prosecutors convinced the jury that Andino went into a rage when the neighbor returned from a trip after a snowstorm, found two children's play tables Andino had put in the McGreevey Way space and moved them for her car:

Proof in the North End.

Trial began today for Carmen Andino, 40, and her daughter Shey Carrasquillo, 19, on charges they stabbed a neighbor on McGreevey Way on Jan. 11, 2010 in a dispute over, among other things, the table they allegedly used to save a parking space after a snowstorm, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Innocent, etc.

One tow company lies in wait there, the Globe explains.

Just like cash, only lighter! Boston is now selling value cards you can use to "feed" meters instead of coins. The city says they're good at meters across town - but not the multi-space ones or the ones that take credit cards - and if you act now, there's a "holiday sale" on the cards. One caveat: Although you can buy them online, you can only recharge their value at City Hall or the ever convenient city tow lot on Frontage Road.

A concerned citizen says enough's enough and uploads this photo from tiny Wiget Street in the North End.

M Street, South Boston: Maybe the wind moved it and maybe it didn't.

The BPS student in the family and I cruised around South Boston and Dorchester today looking for trouble interesting items used to save spaces after the weekend storm. Based on the number of kitty-littler containers and coolers we saw, there are an awful lot of household cats in Southie, where people really like to go on picnics. Also, people put those old little recycling bins to good use.

There was little fanfare a few weeks ago when the Mayor and City Council passed a new ordinance prohibiting parking and standing in bike lanes or marked shared lanes. The fine: $100. This puts it on par with blocking a bus stop, fire lane, fire hydrant, or handicap ramp.

via BU Bikes.

Why? Mainly because of all the illegally parked Boston EMS trucks, Department of Public Health SUVs, and the news vans- all there for a conference at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center. The Channel 7 news crew was even blocking the sidewalk with their camera gear, sitting unused and unattended.

Or, as the tow truck companies call it, "payday".

Aside from the whole entitlement thing, I'm left wondering what this small thing (maybe 18 inches high) is normally used for. Dual Tinker Toys holder?

The Snow Emergency and Parking Ban in Boston was lifted this morning at 9:00 am.

This was confirmed by the Mayor's helpline 617-635-4500 and Boston's snow webpage:

http://www.cityofboston.gov/snow/

"12/19 10:00pm: The snow emergency and parking ban will be lifted at 9:00 am Saturday morning."

After hearing about cities all scurrying to cancel school tomorrow, I asked a few people what their towns were doing. One town government member - who declined to be identified or to identify his town - told me his mayor was being shortsighted and knee-jerkish.

According to my source, this Boston-area community has handled this first storm of the season with a complete lack of common sense. I've written a post over on my blog about the situation, and here's an excerpt...the entire piece.

This street (Longwood Avenue- Google Streetview avoided part of it) is extremely congested. It's also one of two ways to get into the emergency room for Children's Hospital. The lanes are small on this three lane road, and the whole thing is marked no-parking.

But hey: the balding, grey-haired, bespectacled masshole owner of Boston Transportation Department Vehicle with plate # 3045 (who encouraged me to "go ahead and report the tags" but wouldn't tell me his name) apparently feels "it is [a parking space] for me", and parked blocking 1/2 of the only lane going towards the hospitals, and making it dangerous for bicyclists who need that space. He was busy chatting it up with a bunch of other people in suits and ties in front of the Mass College of Pharmacy. Commish, was that you? Maybe that gut wouldn't be so big if you found a proper parking space like everyone else, and walked. Always nice to see the rules mercilessly apply to us, but not to you?

The Globe cites a report that proves that. Naturally, the Globe doesn't provide a link to the report, so here it is.

Right now, there are many police cruisers, both marked and unmarked, parked on Avenue Louis Pasteur. A large number are parked illegally, either in no-parking zones, bus stops, and even blocking crosswalks (in front of Boston Latin, a school zone.) This is an area where both the MBTA and MASCO run a large number of shuttles and need all the room they can get just make the turns. The State Police, Northborough, Danvers, and Boston were among the 'representatives' who showed up with marked cruisers. The unmarked cruisers and personal vehicles had various "I'm a cop" signs- raid jackets in windows, ticket books on dashboards, radios left in plain sight, or emergency lights.

They are attending a conference in Harvard Med's New Research Building, held by IACP, regarding Project Safe Neighborhoods. IACP is a police chief association, so there are probably a bunch of chiefs amongst these lawbreakers. Of note- there are multiple pay lots within 1-2 blocks, and public street parking within a few blocks.

Update: photos from twheaton. More welcome, especially showing plates and the signage showing they're illegally parked.

Joe Keohane tells his South Boston neighbors to shove their persecution complex into the nearest puddle of melted snow and stop bitching about the nerve of the mayor for asking them to clear the streets of their cones and crap already:

... Of course Southie, which is as close to a lawless breakaway province as we have in Boston, responds to this like a bunch of Southerners who got their Confederate flags confiscated by the federal government. They have no time for logic. They're too busy playing the victim. "He's really got it in for us, let me tell you," one resident says of the mayor. "I really feel like he's singling out South Boston."

Of course he is, because you barbarians are the only ones doing this. ...

I'll leave it to fumin' Joe Keohane to explain why Walker's column today (on people complaining about the towing the city is doing because other people were complaining our streets have become an open trash heap) is so inane. But a couple of questions:

Does Walker live somewhere other than Boston? Because he obviously doesn't know what happens to streets where cars are parked when the sweepers come - especially in the winter (by springtime, it's like Revere Beach, there's so much sand).

That having been said, did the city notify people first before it began enforcement? We're not New York and we don't have anything like "alternate side of the street parking" implanted in our brains from birth. A city that can put little paper leaves with leaf-pickup information on every single doorknob in the city twice a year can surely find the resources to put little paper cut-outs in the shape of tow trucks on everybody's door - even here in Roslindale, which Walker says is one of the hardest hit areas (must be down by the Square, since up here in the foothills along the Hyde Park frontier, we never see tow trucks).

Earlier:
City forces her to push her dead car across the street.

Jay lives on a dirty street:

Moments ago a city street sweeper brushed its way down Anderson Street on Beacon Hill. Down the middle of the street. That's because nine of the approximately twelve spaces between Revere and Phillips were filled with cars that weren't moved. ...

He wonders when Hizzoner will make good on his pledge to tow cars that stand in the way of streetsweeping progress. One wonders, though: In this age of self-reliance, why wait for City Hall? Maybe Beacon Hill should get off its duff, follow the Back Bay's lead and annoint some block-captain vigilantes (but would they in turn need supervision to make sure they don't become parking Nazis?).