Nobody is forcing you to live somewhere without parking, and not everyone wants to own a car.

The parking mandate experiment has been going on for decades and the results are in: it sucks!

Parking mandates are so gross tho. Why don’t the people who want to park build their own spots? Forcing everyone to do it is a major reason for the housing crisis and a reason why American urbanism is often so bad.

Correct, if it makes sense for the specific area or road. If you read the entire op-ed the authors aren't against car alternative transportation, in fact they state they are for it, they're against decisions on bike lanes being made without consulting residents in areas where bikes lanes might make little sense for those residents.

OMG your logic is so terrible

I think you could argue they are a form of wealth segregation. I disagree and I think it is more of an attempt to maintain current community ratios for existing residence/voters rather than cater to a group of hypothetical non-residents or vocal want-to-be residents … but I can see an argument for it being deliberate wealth segregation.

You don’t have to play the race card every time. Not everything is about race.

Really, though, I think those regulations are all about preventing predatory developer practices that negatively affect current residents in ways that will last for decades after the developers have taken their profits and moved on.

I mean, over a third of households in Cambridge already don't own a car, so 🤷‍♂️

Parking requirements were created throughout the US as a form of racial segregation after the supreme court outlawed racially based restrictive covenants. Everything else is not smarter for keeping them.

Government regulation is always a good thing when that regulation is motivated by the desire to improve the lives of its citizens. A significant amount of government regulation since the 1980s works precisely the opposite: it’s burdens the populace in favor of special interests. This is one example. Mandated parking was never about accessibility, it was part of a nationwide effort by the auto lobby to make our towns and cities dependent on motor vehicles. It worked. Ask any European what is sneaky the most surprising thing about visiting America and they’ll say how little public transportation there is and how many American cities aren’t walkable. We have ceded so much public space to cars and we don’t even realize it.

Developers will charge the same market rate and pocket the saved costs

It adds 100-$250 in “rent” via converting development costs to rental prices but I don’t see anything that prevents developers from just charging the same market rate rents and pocketing the saved expenses.

"You don't need a car in Cambridge" Just a dumb sentence.

1. All public transit should be fee-free and paid through taxes.
2. Yes, busses can be good for certain disabled people, but not all. There are a lot of disabled people not in wheelchairs. And busses also have limited wheelchair capacity.
3. I want expanded mass transit, too. But these things have to happen side-by-side. We need a ring line. We need a line that goes from Medford to Somerville to Cambridge to Allston that then also links up all of the Green Lines.
4. We also have things in-between. In addition to essentially cars or minivans, The Ride also has small busses. Subsidizing taxis and rideshares is easy and doesn't require much more management cost, but if we really wanted to be efficient we would expand The Ride and make it more effective/efficient. As-is, it's extremely unavailable, slow, and late.
   1. Edit: Also, The Ride is part of the state government. It's not something that Cambridge could implement by itself.

"Affordable Housing"? Affordable to whom? The people that worked at NECCO?

Lol

Another clueless, and condescending person that moved to Cambridge. You UNCambridge when you bring your ideas and impose them on us. NOW... go research George Rothman.

Mass transit is actually good for disables people since it's insanely cheap, and simple to use since busses are tall so they don't have a complicated boarding process and can also have designated seats for them. Especially if someone is in a wheel chair, stuff like low floor busses with ramps for wheel chairs which is honestly a standard on modern day busses. Plus with transit getting better everyone benefits! Since less people will NEED to drive which means that there will be less cars on the road thuss reducing congestion.

I agree that transit for disabled people should be expanded (we have The Ride, but it's chronically underfunded and almost useless). And I keep saying this, and that we should do this before taking away the only other real alternative for a lot of disabled people (driving). And yet, the only interest seems to be in reducing the number of cars on the road. Frankly, I think that because real accommodations for the disabled would require subsidizing taxis or rideshares (not mass transit), the people involved don't want to do it because that would still be cars on the road. It doesn't personally affect them, so they don't care.

Have you tried to park on the street in Cambridge recently? Time-value-of-money, you’ll spend more than $150/month trying to find street parking for your car.

Having a car isn’t a function of location. It is a function of life. If you have a job that requires you work from different locations every day, if you have kids, if you are old… People won’t stop needing cars.

This will make Cambridge more congested, harder to find parking, and drive out all but a few very targeted demographics.

Honestly, it feels like a few wealthy developers were able to fast-sell a young, single male to do something self-serving without thinking of the long-term repercussions.

I own in Cambridge (lives here 10 years) and I work in Boston. While I take the T to work every day, I have a car and parking, for which I am grateful, because I also have kids who have sports activities, trips to the zoo or the science museums, or just to the Fells for a day hike. We eat at local restaurants that we can walk to but we will also drive to places in the city that aren’t on the red or green lines.

I would think that Cambridge would want to encourage families like mine to want to put down roots in the city. This change does the opposite. I understand that all laws aren’t supposed to benefit one group or another but I don’t see how the only ones who benefit from this really are the real estate developers that can now flip a property that was previously not workable and then walk away from the problem they created.

Why is it a good thing if someone who is legally blind has to drive? Transit should be expanded instead, that's the best thing for disabled people since they can just get shuttled around on low floor busses for like 60$/month maybe even lower(cars that cost less then 100/month with all costs combined are freaking rare).

Wouldn't it be better to create more space for people? If roads were narrowed, there would be more space for wider sidewalks allowing people with mobility issues to actually use wheelchairs on sidewalks. Ever tried to use a wheelchair outside main business thoroughfares? It's impossible in this city, which forces people into their cars. It's important to realize that encouraging those who are able to cycle and use public transport creates more space for those who absolutely need to use cars. This is not ableist in the slightest. The opposite in fact.

Just because developers don't HAVE to build parking, doesn't mean they won't. They can still do it and charge a premium for it.

There are very good reasons why it is illegal almost everywhere else. It isn’t to protect developers, it is to protect citizens from destructively selfish developer practices. I am not sure why we think we are smarter than everywhere else by making legal what they have all learned, painfully, should stay illegal.

This feels very shady. Real estate developers and landlords in Cambridge got a windfall today and I don’t think it will turn into lower housing prices or fewer cars. I do think a few connected developers will get a few more millions of dollars from properties they couldn’t develop before.

If 1/3 of people drive, now they're all going to park on the street everytime a new building goes up. So, less parking for those of us who really need it. (That's assuming that these high-end developments have the same type of resident as the rest of the city and that they aren't more likely to drive.) Instead of removing all parking minimums, they should have had adaptive parking minimums with 1/3 of residents given 1 space, adjusted for expected needs. Now instead of having an unnecessarily large parking minimum there is an unnecessarily small one (none).

In your case, wouldn't it be better for you to have more people on bikes and using public transport, freeing up the roads and parking so that you can actually get places more easily? It's not ableist to encourage healthier and more sustainable transport choices for those who are able. In fact, it makes.more space for those who actually need it.

Cambridge has a greater percentage of affordable housing than just about any other city in Massachusetts

http://www.massaffordablehomes.org/localrankings.aspx

I’m sorry you couldn’t afford to keep living here, but rent control wasn’t the solution.

I'm talking to YOU, now. I was BORN, RAISED in Cambridge until chased out.

If you did nothing to STOP those landowners, you are part of the problem.

Schools closed, and now Parking Spaces is how you fix the problem? Seriously? Again... Pat backs now. And if you aren't renting, you need to hush.