Parking: Case History

In the fall of 1947, the Student Council decided to take on the parking problem. Cambridge police that autumn had been exceptionally active in tagging street-parked cars; the Council decided that a University-owned parking lot was the solution.

Originally, the Council proposed a lot just past the muddy driveway which cuts across the far end of the Stadium. A poll indicated that approximately half the College's car owners would be in favor of such a lot. On November 7 the Council drew up plans for Soldiers Field parking, setting a three to five dollar monthly charge for the privilege, and submitted the idea to the Corporation. Three weeks later the Corporation approved the plans, and said the lot would be ready by the first of the year-if 250 students signed up to use it.

The Council set up shop in the H.A.A.'s basement ticket office and waited for applications to pour in. Two frantic days later exactly 20 students had applied for parking privileges and the Soldiers Field lot died a charitable death over Christmas vacation.

Now the Corporation is going to try another trans-river lot, this time on the marshy field behind the Business School. Unlike the old Council plan, the University's idea calls for compulsory registration of every student's car, and a pledge to keep that car off city streets overnight. Charles C. Pyne, assistant to the Vice-President, says one of the chief reasons for the lot has been a recent flood of complaints about difficulty in finding parking space.

We smell a parallel. There were all sorts of complaints afoot when the Council thought up its original parking lot, but when the student had to put down four dollars a month to park his car three-quarters of a mile away, it just wasn't worth it. Mr. Pyne figures a five-minute walk for the distance, reasonable time for a cross-country man; students will probably forego the exercise and the fee and go on parking their cars on the streets.

It is on these streets, not across the river, that a solution to the parking problem must be found. The problem is simply that the City of Cambridge doggedly prohibits parking on the streets overnight, muttering about fire hazards and snow removal, although neither the fire department nor the snow removers have complained. In the back-ground sits a group of garage owners who will continue to wax and grow fat as long as the street parking ban remains. If the University wants to solve the parking problem, it should turn from its distant swamp across the river, from a lot which nobody will want. It should look to the streets.