City to Obey Parking Freeze

The city of Cambridge has agreed not to issue any additional permits for commercial parking facilities in compliance with state and federal Clean Air Act regulations, city officials said yesterday.

At a City Council meeting last night, City Manager Robert W. Healy told members he will not issue more permits for commercial parking, but that the city will allow "properly qualified exemptions" to the parking freeze.

The parking freeze applies to commercial facilities such as resturants, hotels, office spaces and retail businesses, but free-standing parking garages like the large one on JFK Street in Harvard Square will not be affected, Healy said.

The question of which garage projects might lose their permits led to a shouting match at the meeting between Healy and Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55, who asked the City Manager to define "properly defined exemptions."

"I'm not sure," Healy replied. "If an exemption is permitted it will qualify for the exemption."

"These [exemption criteria] are policy matters that the City Council ought to be a part of," Duehay told him. "Would you please keep us informed on this evolving saga?"

To reduce air pollution in Cambridge, state and federal representatives from the Massachusetts Environmental Quality Engineering (DEQE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) met on November 10 with city officials to work out a parking freeze for Cambridge, Healy said.

The commercial parking freeze is part of a state plan required under the Clean Air Act to reduce air pollution by automobiles, Healy said.

Cambridge is also addressing the problem of local air pollution through other measures such as redesigning major intersections, computerizing traffic signal controls and "traffic mitigation measures in city Zoning Ordinances," Healy added.

Healy told the Council last week that the city had not broken the parking freeze, although letters from the state and federal agencies were pressuring Cambridge to revoke the building permits for several garages, particularly one on Binney St. in East Cambridge.

Earlier this month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Quality Engineering (DEQE) notified the city's legal department of "apparent discrepancies" between a 1975 EPA law on commercial parking and Cambridge's compliance with it.

Healy replied in a letter that the city had not issued more permits for commercial parking spaces than the number allowed under the Clean Air Act.

The 1975 ruling prohibits expansion of available commuter parking from 1973 levels. While that decision affected all communities, its effect has been particularly noticeable in Cambridge, a city that, according to Parking Commissioner George Teso, has more linear feet of cars than of streets.