Parking bargain lures efficient vehicles
Scooters get 25-cent slots in the Back Bay
Newbury Street, of all places, now offers the best parking deal in town, 25 cents an hour. But there is a catch: You have to ride a scooter or motorcycle to fit in the parking space.
In response to last year?s scooter parking debate, the Boston Transportation Department has taken six parking spaces on Newbury and Boylston streets and divided them into the city?s first metered bike slots. By 3 p.m. today, some 39 slots will be available to bikes in front of the Apple store, Starbucks, and other hot spots, each with meters that either a scooter or motorcycle can be chained to for safety.
Cars pay 25 cents for just 15 minutes to park. In addition to being cheaper, bike meters will not have time limits, meaning that bike-riding commuters can arrive at 8 a.m., feed the meter, and stay all day.
By creating the bike slots, city officials, including Mayor Thomas M. Menino are signaling a commitment to ecofriendly transportation, with many scooters getting 100 miles to a gallon. Parking signs for the slots are appropriately green, and if the slots are well used, more may pop up in other Boston neighborhoods next year.
?We have to accommodate the changes going on in our modes of transportation,?? said Menino, who is expected for today?s 3 p.m. unveiling on Boylston Street.
?I find more and and more people driving scooters than ever before. We?re accommodating another class of riders in our city so they can park safety.??
Officials also hope by providing legal parking spots on streets, scooter riders will begin to migrate off sidewalks, where they have customarily parked for free.
But will scooter owners really pay to park when plopping a bike on the sidewalk still does not cost anything?
?I can honestly say I will do whatever is more convenient,?? said Caryn Hsu, 20, who rode her Honda Metropolitan scooter to work yesterday in the Back Bay. ?Sometimes parking on the sidewalk is a hassle. I have to wait for people to move on the sidewalk, and sometimes people get a little upset if I bring my bike on the sidewalk. If there were so many parking spots on the street that it?s just as easy to park there, I would pay 25 cents.??
Thomas Tinlin, the city?s transportation commissioner, said he is optimistic that bike owners will gravitate to the slots because owners he has spoken with have repeatedly told him they would rather obey the law and inhabit an official parking space.
While Boston allows scooter-size bikes to be parked unobtrusively on sidewalks, they are technically not allowed there. If the city chose to ticket bikes on sidewalks, it could do so at any time, particularly now that most scooters are required by the Registry of Motor Vehicles to have easy-to-track license plates.
Back Bay business owners think the new slots are a good idea, even if means the loss of a few, valuable car parking spaces.
?As motorized vehicles, scooters should be on the street,?? said Tom Clay, district manager for Sleepy?s mattresses on Boylston Street.
Hsu said she appreciates that the city is trying to accommodate scooters, but suggested a slightly different strategy.
?Maybe if they created the slots and let bikers park in them for free, then more people would be encouraged to buy scooters and save the Earth,?? she said.
