December 2024:

The Main Issues

To solve the current issues, they must first be clearly articulated. Here is a list of the main issues with the parking ban’s current implementation.

The parking ban isn’t effective. Over the past year, I’ve documented the fact that the overnight parking ban doesn’t work well at keeping vehicles off the streets. I.e., during a snow event, dozens (if not hundreds) of vehicles can still be found parked on the streets overnight within town limits.

The parking ban creates hardship for some residents. Not everyone in town has off-street parking for their vehicles, and finding parking during the wintertime is a definite hardship for these residents.

The parking ban is “designed to fail.” The goal of the parking ban is to keep the streets clear for snow preparation and removal. While snow can occur at any time, the ban is only active between the hours of 1AM and 7AM. Thus, every time there is a snow emergency or potential snow emergency in Winchester, the town will declare a parking ban despite the existence of the overnight ban.

The parking ban and its enforcement are not transparent. Unlike other local towns, Winchester does no post signage regarding the ban. Unlike other towns, Winchester does not post an exact start or end date for enforcement of the winter ban. As a result, prospective residents move into town without any prior awareness of the parking ban, and current residents are confused about when it’s “acceptable” to park on the street overnight.

Current enforcement is counterproductive. According to official parking ticket data, the vast majority of tickets are issued on days when it is not snowing, including days when there is 0% chance of snow. This angers residents, and potentially results in a lack of motivation to move their vehicles off the road during an actual snow event.

Ways to Improve the Parking Ban

Here are some ideas to implement the ban more effectively and fairly:

Create a more effective alert system: Require the owner of any vehicle parked on-street overnight to sign up for alerts from the Department of Public Works. Residents who are signed up for alerts will not be ticketed for overnight parking on nights when there are no snow events.

Establish more effective enforcement policies: Enforce the parking ban only during a snow event, and strictly enforce the ban during a snow event.

Eliminate or reduce hardships caused by the ban: Offer parking permits to residents who don’t have off-street parking available.

Increasing the safety of nighttime street navigation: Implementing 1-sided street parking on narrower streets.

Increase transparency of the parking ban: Add appropriate signage at major roads into town regarding the ban such as “No overnight parking during snow emergency” or “No overnight parking without permit from Dec 1 – Mar 1.”

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February 2024:

How to Find the Right Solution

In order to implement the most optimal solution, the following steps need to be taken:

1. Identify what we want to accomplish
2. Research best practices to produce the desired results
3. Develop and implement a practical approach

When creating a solution, it is very important that we focus on the goals first. If we jump straight to a solution, such as to “convert the all-year ban into a winter ban,” we may not end up with the intended results. To achieve what we wish to accomplish, we must first be very clear about what it is that we wish to accomplish.

Identifying the Goals

The following are goals that we may wish to strive for:

• Ensuring that the roads are clear during snowstorms and snow emergencies on roads where this is essential. (For instance, there are roads in the flats that are wide and flat; is it really essential for cars on these roads to be moved off street?)
• Allowing any resident to park their registered car on the street next to their residence anywhere it is safe and anytime of year outside of a snow emergency

Best Practices

One of the most important best practices for parking restrictions is to ensure that we only restrict parking when it is necessary to do so. Failure to achieve this goal will result in lax enforcement, which in turns leads to conflicts among residents, and between residents and town officials.

Another best practice is to identify groups of people who could be more deeply impacted by the restrictions and which lead to hardship scenarios for these groups. In the case of a parking ban, these groups would include residents without off-street parking, disabled persons, and the elderly. Failure to address the needs of these groups would potentially result in unintentional discrimination.

Current Strategies

Towns that have overnight and winter bans seem to fall into two categories:

1. The parking bans are only enforced when residents complain.
2. Strict enforcement causes extreme hardship for some residents.

Because town-wide overnight parking bans are largely unnecessary, any type of enforcement does more harm than good: Lax enforcement leads to:

• Division in the community (read my story here and watch Part 2 of our video series discussing the link between neighbor complaints and enforcement).
• Residents who outright ignore the ban (causing it to become ineffective at accomplishing its intended purpose). Evidence that the parking ban is ineffective can be found in Part 1 of our video series.

Meanwhile, strict enforcement leads to hardships among renters and lower income residents (and some people on social media have bluntly suggested that this is the goal.) For more about the hardships caused by strict overnight parking, please read: Silent Discrimination: The Dark Side of Overnight Parking Bans.

Two alternatives to overnight parking bans are:

1. Resident permits
2. No restrictions except during snow emergencies.

Residents with permits do not have to worry about complaints from neighbors, and the enforcement of permits is often strict (and thus fair).

Spotlight on Newton

Newton is a town with a winter-only parking ban, but this ban was temporarily suspended during the Covid-19 emergency. This is what the town government said about the suspension:

During that winter, we found that we were still able to get cars off the streets during heavy snowstorms by declaring a snow emergency, so that our plows could clear our roadways curb to curb.

[City Council] recently put forward a docket item for the full Council to discuss modifying the Overnight Parking Ban to help alleviate the burden on residents without a place to park their car during the winter. 

https://www.newtonma.gov/Home/Components/News/News/34/

Factors to Consider

Despite its size, there is a lot of variety in Winchester in regards to roads and geography. One section of Winchester has wide, flat streets, while another area has winding, narrow roads. Thus, coming up with a “one size fits all” solution doesn’t necessarily make sense.

Another factor to consider is that there is no area of Winchester where you can reasonably be expected to live without a car. While it is possible to commute to work on public transportation, working and living are two different things. According to the Walk Score website, even the Winchester town center is rated a 55 out of 100.

Forming a Solution

Since snowstorms happen day or night, the town of Winchester already communicates to residents regarding upcoming snow emergencies. What may be needed is to explore if communication can be more effective, and potentially an initiative is already underway to do just that.

Logically, this means that an overnight parking ban to clear the roads for snow is unnecessary. And if most people can agree with this supposition, then we can focus on alternatives that do not include an overnight parking ban.

Proposals

The following ideas could be considered for replacing the overnight parking ban.

• Implement town-wide resident parking permits.
• Identifying hazardous roads (narrow, steep incline, sharp curve) and adding no parking signs as appropriate.
• Setting up an official town emergency communication system.

Should a winter overnight parking ban remain in effect (which is not advisable for reasons explained above), residents who do not have off-street parking should be allowed to apply for permits.