Well, this was meant to be a small complaint against a project I generally think is great. But I'll elaborate.
Broadly, I think on-street parking is a bad idea. It takes up a huge amount of space that could be used for other things. It serves a miniscule number of people compared to the space it takes up. It makes driving worse because people parking have to at some point be stopped or backing up into traffic. And parked cars are a big visual barrier that make it harder for drivers to see when a pedestrian is going to step into the street or a crosswalk (especially if it is a child stepping into the street). Especially where space is constrained, like basically anywhere in Boston, I think it's a bad idea to use our precious public space to let people store their private automobiles. I know I'm fighting an uphill battle on this one, but that's roughly how I see it.
I pointed out that I dislike the planned on-street parking on Ellery for a few more specific reasons:
If the #bancars people want to complain about something, how about complaining about the car parking along Dot Ave?
Yeah, that's fair. I also think the parking along Dot Ave is bad. And you're right, it might be worse. My problem with the parking on Ellery is that those are brand new streets segments. They don't exist at all right now. Dot Ave has a status quo of parking that people will fight to protect, but Ellery is a total blank slate and we can design it however we want. It is disheartening to use that space for car storage of questionable value.
Coffee Shop Tenant - Residents/Employees in the area are the most likely to walk to one of these shops during the day or weekend. But a person moving through the city (more than likely via car) may want to patron that shop. If they have to drive around and find the garage, they probably wont stop. If there is a convenient spot right out front, they are more than likely to stop than not.
I'm really skeptical that a significant number of people drive around the densest parts of Boston to get a cup of coffee. That number dwindles further when only considering people willing to drive, but can't find one of the
three immediately adjacent parking garages.
And either way, I don't think we should be encouraging people to drive a personal vehicle crosstown for coffee. One of the huge advantages of this project is it is 100 yards from a T stop. That Andrew Station is also a hub for 6 or 7 bus lines. This is some of the greatest Transit Oriented Development going up in the region. Why would we want to encourage more cars to go through here?
Yes, the sidewalks are wide enough in this plan, but only because the building footprint is cut back and the sidewalks run on private property. You can see it really clearly by flipping through the last few pages of the most
recent presentation. Those pics show Dot Ave, but it's the same problem all the way around. The on-street parking currently cuts into the sidewalk so much that there hardly anything left. To fix that, the sidewalk
should be extended into what is now just parking. Instead, the sidewalk gets widened into the private property, and the proposed building has to shrink. (This seems to be happening at a lot of projects around Boston, now).
The extra footprint to the building being described (whether internal rentable space, exterior patio space or public ROW space) that could generate revenue is prolly pretty minimal - if not non-existent -
No, I don't think it's minimal. On just the ground floor, removing the on-street parking would be an extra 10 feet along most the width and length of the building. That's one, maybe two thousand square feet. If that's just for cafe space, any restaurant would desperately want an extra couple thousand square feet. If that space was used to expand the building footprint, then that's a couple thousand square feet over each of 15 stories, here. Space-wise, that's the same as adding a couple of stories to the building. That's huge.
Cafe zones are included in addition to that.
Just eyeballing it, but there looks like there is as much space for on-street parking on Ellery as there is cafe space. If you look at all the cafe space and parking around these couple of blocks, there's more land area dedicated to car storage, by a wide margin.
Restaurant Tenant - To attract quality restaurant tenants, many like to provide a valet option to patrons. It is possible that within their lease some of the on-street parking is coned off during restaurant hours to provide a stacking area for the valets to effectively serve those patrons. If that on-street option is not there, then the valet option is in the travel lane, or not provided at all. If valet is not available, those tenants are no longer available to market a space to.
Again, this means we're dedicated all that land area for the small sliver of people willing to drive to Andrew Square, but not willing to park in the garage immediately around the corner. And I just don't buy it that valet parking is
that important. This city has plenty of expensive and fancy restaurants with no valet parking (often no parking at all). All over the North End, or Back Bay, South End, Harvard Square....
There's a fully protected bike lane right there on Dot Ave! Why do you need another bike on a side street one block over?!?! Its crazy talk
I wasn't really advocating for a bike lane on Ellery. I mean, there's already one in the plans, and I think that's a good thing. Maybe it could use some tweaks.
But oh I wish,
I wish, that same logic was sometimes applied to car infrastructure. "Why do we need cars on this street when there are cars a block away? Why do we need a full lane for parking cars when there's a whole parking garage around the corner?!?! Its crazy talk...."
This isn't remotely accurate and we've got receipts:
www.massincpolling.com
