Re: Parking

There are certain topics which turn up again and again on the piece of yellow copy paper which lists forthcoming CRIMSON editorials. Parking is one of them. Some of these editorals have wondered why there is a parking problem, others have picked over the solutions to the problem. Right now, they make interesting reading.

A Year ago last spring, for example, local policemen started an enthusiastic campaign to clear cars from Mill Street, between Lowell and Winthrop Houses.

EDITORIAL, MAY 2, 1949: "Cambridge . . . streets could be annoying competition for the overnight parking trade but for one pleasantly coincidental fact; the City forbids parking on them . . . the no parking ordinance makes fine sense for the men who own garages; the people who own cars find it tougher to understand."

A similar drive started last fall.

EDITORIAL, OCTOBER 5, 1949: "All the trouble comes from an old, old statute on the Cambridge books which prohibits parking after 2 a.m. . . . the Police Department defends the statute on the grounds that cars on the street at night are a hazard to the Fire Department . . . but the Fire Department has pointed out that it can get its hook and ladders through any streets where parkers obey the daytime parking signs . . . There is only one group of people who stand to gain from the parking law, and they are the proprietors of the local garages and parking lots."

Late last spring the University proposed a parking lot behind the Business School, plus a pledge from students to keep their cars off the streets at night.

EDITORIAL, MAY 30, 1950; "In the fall of 1947, the Student Council decided that a University-owned parking lot was the solution to the parking problem . . . the Corporation approved . . . exactly 20 students applied and the Soldiers Field lot died a charitable death.

Now the Corporation is going to try another trans-river lot, this time on the marshy field behind the Business School . . . If the University wants to solve the parking problem, it should turn from this distant swamp across the river, from a lot which nobody will want."

This fall the University has officially adopted the Cambridge ban. Students must register their cars, they must keep them off the streets--either in high-priced garages or the ex-swamp. The University did not question the Cambridge law, nor did it worry much about the convenience of its lot, No parking still makes no sense.