Several towns in the Boston area have tried to repeal their overnight/winter parking bans over the past several years. One notable case is the town of Newton, which raised over 10,000 signatures to put the question on the ballot in the November 2025 election. With a high turnout of 37.6% of registered voters and 11,032 votes to repeal the ban, the measure fell short by 71 votes. This was a disappointing end to a multi-year effort to repeal the ban.
Meanwhile, the effort to repeal the overnight parking ban in Winchester claimed it’s first major victory with a pilot project that temporarily eliminates the parking ban in a high-density area of the town. This pilot project could potentially lead to a full repeal of the ban at a later date.
Getting to this point was not easy: there were notable missteps that likely slowed down the process. For the benefit of other towns who are interested in repealing their overnight parking bans, the following is an examination of what worked and what didn’t.
What didn’t work (or wouldn’t work):
Offering solutions. At the beginning of the effort to repeal the ban, a petition was sent to the Select Board asking to repeal the ban and offering possible solutions that would help remove vehicles from the streets during a snow emergency. Although the petition stressed that any solution that repeals the ban is acceptable, this point was ignored. Instead, the petition was sent to the DPW and town safety officials, who argued why the solutions offered in the petition would not work. These arguments were then used to reject the petition outright.
(Lack of) Support from Town safety officials: From research, I discovered that the towns which were successful with the repeal were the ones in which public safety officers or the head of DPW were in agreement with repealing the ban. The petition initially failed in Winchester because the entire team of town officials – from the engineers office to the police and fire chiefs r- ejected the idea of appealing the ban.
Putting the measure on a ballot: In Winchester, it would have been potentially possible to put this measure to a vote at the semiannual town meeting. But since this issue negatively affected a minority of residents, it was very possible that the Town Meeting members would vote against the measure (which would be a significant setback).
What did work:
Documentation of the current situation: to repeal the ban, it was necessary to document – with evidence – why the ban needed to be repealed. This somewhat obvious step is overlooked, but very important. When the repeal of the parking ban goes straight to a vote (without the supporting research), the question becomes a matter of opinion, which is a situation that should be avoided.
An important part of the documentation process involved driving around the town at night multiple times during parking ban hours in order to document the number of vehicles that were actually parked on the streets at the night. (This took several hours each time.) I also submitted public record requests for parking ticket data to prove that enforcement of the parking ban was extremely low. Both (1) the high number of vehicles in violation of the ban and (2) the almost complete lack of enforcement of those vehicles were strong evidence that the ban was extremely unnecessary.
Emphasize the Social Justice concerns: based on evidence from my research, I was able to prove that while overnight parking violations occurred in almost all areas of the town, enforcement was mainly limited to the lower-income areas of town without adequate off-street parking. This is the type of concern that is most likely to bring town officials to support a repeal of the parking ban.
Public awareness campaigns on social media: after collecting the data, I created and posted videos to social media to explain why the overnight parking ban was unfair. These videos emphasized the large numbers of vehicles that were parked overnight on a daily basis, as well as the targeted enforcement of those videos. Although these videos were not always warmly received (at least not initially), they did lead to a greater public awareness regarding the social justice concerns that were caused by the overnight parking ban.
Playing the long game: in government, change usually occurs much more slowly than most people would like. Additionally, strong demands to change the status quo are often met with strong opposition, especially when the status quo is an almost century-old regulation. Therefore, after making three publics on the repeal of the parking ban to the Select Board (over the course of a few months), I stepped back to “let things take their course.” I didn’t even expect success at that point, but apparently once “the seeds were planted” it was simply a matter of time for this proposal to gain traction and take off. The waiting process took over a year before the pilot project was announced.
