A mixed bag of parking regulations in Boston and staffing shortages in the city’s parking enforcement division have created exasperating experiences for residents who need to leave their cars on city streets, city councilors said.
Frustrations aired at a City Council meeting on digitizing parking rules come as a top Boston transportation official said the Wu administration plans to issue new draft regulations for the city’s transportation department within the year, is in the process of auditing thousands of residential parking permits, and hopes to create a digital map of parking signs by next June.
East Boston City Councilor Gabriela Coletta said East Boston, Charlestown, and the North End are extremely dense and experiencing “exponential growth.” That leads to tough parking situations for many residents, she said.
“I know this is something that is felt across Boston,” Coletta said. “Anecdotally, on-street parking regulations in my district are almost like an ad hoc patchwork of regulations.”
Leaders of several neighborhood civic associations, including the Jeffries Point Neighborhood Association, previously told the Herald that parking in most city neighborhoods is almost like a chore, one that can bring about frustration and rage. Private parking spots are expensive.
City officials said new resident spots are not in the immediate future.
The city paused applications to the residential parking program, temporarily barring neighborhoods or specific streets from adding spots until an audit of the more than 125,000 resident parking permits in Boston’s 20-plus neighborhoods is complete.
Boston Deputy Transportation Chief Nick Gove said the administration started the audit with Bay Village, which had 677 active residential parking permits. Gove said the city cut permits down to 439, eliminating 238 “invalid stickers.”
Gove said the city plans to audit South Boston next, which has more than 28,900 active parking permits, according to city data last updated on June 28. That makes it the top neighborhood for residential parking. Brighton-Allston came second with more than 24,500, according to the data provided to the Herald.
Auditing the thousands of parking stickers for unused permits only solves part of the problem.
Coletta said low staffing among parking enforcement officers makes it difficult to keep up with the number of cars that might be violating rules or regulations. Parking violations amounted to $97 million in revenue for the city in fiscal year 2023.
City of Boston 311 Director Rocco Corigliano said the average salary of a traffic enforcement officer is roughly $47,500 a year if they are making base pay. The officers are required to come in five days a week and can get out of the city’s residency requirement after 10 years of service, he said.
Corigliano said increasing pay “could be a question that can be looked at.”
City Council President Ed Flynn said the officers are “not getting paid enough.”
“Let’s increase their pay,” he said. “We come into this building, we all make big salaries here. All of us here are probably making more than $100,000 a year. Let’s increase their pay. They’re not getting paid enough as far as I’m concerned.”
Parking enforcement officers are in the process of bargaining a new union contract, according to Gove.
Officials are also working on ways to better understand the vast array of parking rules found throughout the city.
City of Boston Chief Information Officer Santiago Garces said his office is looking to create a digital catalog of parking signs and other curbside assets like markings, lighting, or even benches by June 2024.
Garces said the city previously contracted with Netherlands-based CycloMedia to document right of ways around Boston using a car outfitted with cameras and sensors. That data could be scraped to create a digital map of parking signs, traffic signals, and pavement markings, he said.
“We’re in the process of working through the contract for the data extraction,” Garces said, adding that it would cost local taxpayers about $800,000.
Gove said another solution to parking in Boston could come through a review of regulations for the Boston Transportation Department, the city entity tasked with planning, building, maintaining, and operating streets.
“We have just started that process. But we are hoping to at least roll out what a draft looks like later this year,” Gove said. “The BTD regulations cover everything from parking, traffic, basically all of the activity within the public way.”