Cops, Cars, and the City Council

Five weeks ago University officials and the Cambridge City Council sat down together and talked about parking. They were trying to work out for good and all the problem which has kept police and students playing hide-and-seek for ten-dollar stakes ever since the war.

That meeting produced two sensible plans; one permitting all night parking around municipal parks and playgrounds, the other allowing it on one side of most streets. The City Council talked them over at its next meeting, then turned over the plans to a pair of local administrative boards for "recommendations." The boards promised prompt action, but there the plans still sit. Every night those plans stay there will mean more cars hauled away.

This pattern of plan and vacillation shows through the whole history of the parking problem. It is about time it ended. There are 2,700 cars at the University, and either of the two recent proposals would give a lot of them room on local streets. Neither the fire department nor the snow removal people have ever expressed strong objections to this on-street parking, and garage operators have long denied that they have been pressuring to keep parking places scarce. But while the plans are in the works, police are still busily tagging the cars of students who are hard put to figure out what the Council intends to do. There is no reason for these plans to disappear for five weeks into the swampland of "recommendation." The City Council has a chance to cut through a considerable part of the parking tangle. It is about time it did.