Parking: No Backing Out

In Cambridge, at least, the proverbial fast-disappearing pedestrian may soon be joined by a fast-disappearing motorist if cars multiply at the present extravagant rate while parking and traffic facilities remain virtually static.

The phenomenal increase in student and local cars in the Harvard area has evoked much rhetoric from college and city leaders without reaching any feasible solution to the problem of where to put them. In fact, many responsible persons doubt that there is any answer, short of eliminating student cars.

Registrations of student cars to date are up nearly 1,000 cars over last year's early October total of 2,800 according to University Police Captain Matthew F. Toohy, who estimates that well over 5,000 members of the University operate automobiles.

Total Cambridge registration figures are in excess of 43,000 cars, or more than one car for every three residents. The national average is one car for four people, which in itself is astronomical. China has an estimated one car per 8,000 population, Russia one per 4,000 while England, Europe's leader has one for every 38 people, and Canada, next behind the U. S., has roughly one for every 20.

Blossoming Signs

Local auto density is one of the highest in the nation. Coupled with city streets some of which were well trodden during John Harvard's lifetime, and with 234,000 non-resident vehicles using them every day, a parking problem has resulted.

University officials have grasped some initiative by requiring all students to register their autos with the Yard police, and more recently by enforcing this rule. Lots handling over a total of 1,000 cars have been set up and little signs have blossomed in cement directing drivers please not to park here, there, and everywhere on University property, especially without permits. But the lots are full, the signs are ignored, and the streets crowded with thousands of illegally parked cars.

The situation is complicated by Cambridge's 25-year old ordinance prohibiting parking on city streets for longer than one hour between the hours of two and six a.m. or, in effect, banning overnight parking on streets.

Over half of Cambridge's streets are 27 feet or less wide, curb to curb. On many of these, parking on both sides and two-way traffic is permitted. The average car is six feet three inches wide, and, parked within one foot of the curb, leaves less than thirteen feet for two cars whose width totals twelve and one half feet to pass.

All this has gone unnoticed by the city fathers. Many people have proposed even more solutions. Cambridge Police Chief Patrick F. Ready, who affirms that he's "not out to get Harvard students," wants to ban all cars in the College except seniors' (and presumably faculty).

Chairman of the City Council's traffic committee Edward J. Sullivan, who says there aren't enough police to enforce the laws anyway, wants to ban them altogether for students. City councillor Joseph A. DiGugielmo '29 tends to agree with Ready; a sizeable number of local residents tend to agree with Sullivan.

Councillor John Lynch, last heard here debating Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. '38, professor of History, on the extent of faculty subversion--communist, not traffic--isn't exactly sure what to do.

City Manager John J. Curry '19 is sure. He thundered his answer across his massive desk in City Hall:

"Tear down the Fly Club's back yard and build a parking lot. So we do away with a bit of aesthetics. I'm not concerned with whether the Fly Club is willing."

Council candidates and Cambridge editor of the Boston Record American Edward M. Martin wants to build a combination bomb shelter-parking garage under Cambridge Common.

Syngman Rhee is for Syngman Rhee.

Problems: Town or Gown?

There is as little agreement over who should solve the problem around the Square as over how to solve it. The University, while making token efforts at controlling its cars, feels that traffic is essentially a city problem, and directs its efforts to a noticeable extent at educating rather than parking its students. The city officials, who suggest that the Square is occasionally congested, feel that the University really ought to consider students' transportation along with their matriculation. Sullivan claims that the University is downright uncooperative in this respect too.

Traffic problems, while never as ridiculous as in recent years, have rarely been sublime since Henry Ford first began bring cylinders. Back in 1927, Will Rogers told a group of traffic engineers that "this traffic congestion is becoming steadily worse." He proposed that on Mondays, everyone be required to drive in an easterly direction, Tuesdays west, Wednesdays north and Thursdays south. Then these motorists should stay home the other three days, leaving the field clear for weekend drivers."

Uncircled Square

Less than ten years ago, the city tried what mathematicians long have known to be impossible: circling the Square by making it one huge traffic rotary. The results were as disastrous on the streets as they always have been in geometricians' calculations.

Focal point of the overnight parking problem is the city ordinance banning cars on the streets all night. Ready, Curry and Lynch favor standing pat on the law which they say was the result of public pressure. Curry claims that there is sufficient parking space for all student cars on University property (there isn't) while he's not going to worry about illegally parked cars till he sees all the city's parking lots, garages and driveways bulging with autos every night. Ready, who really isn't too worried either, feels that parked cars are a fire hazard and obstruct refuse and snow removal.

Mayor John J. Foley, Councilor Marcus Morton (Yale '16), and Charles C. Pyne, assistant to the Administrative Vice-President of the University Edward R. Reynolds, look upon alternate side, alternate night parking as a possible step toward a realistic answer. Pyne affirmed that the present ordinance, because it is occasionally violated, tends to weaken respect for other traffic regulations. Alternate side parking, Foley feels, would also solve the cleaning and snow removal obstacles.

Curry thinks that the present ordinance is so well enforced that such a solution would leave the problem of where to put the other half of the cars presently parked on the streets at night.

While he feels that enforcement of the law is practically impossible, (Ready says it is enforced), Morton said that the present complement of night patrolmen could easily enforce a more realistic ordinance and would also be more disposed to do so. Sullivan wants more police.

Concern is also in the air over congestion in the Square, over the fact that, at certain times during the day, it can take as long as 20 minutes to drive, say from Lamont to PBH. Most freshmen and able upperclass men could walk this distance comfortably in four minutes.

De Guglielmo, would solve this by making the Yard into a traffic circle. He would divert all Arlington-bound traffic through Quincy street, thereby reversing its present direction and make Massachusetts Ave. one way Bostonward. Morton suggests that this plan would also require building an unsightly overpass for freshmen on their way to Union meals, since they might have trouble battling the madding crowd of mechanized citizens on the ground level.

At this week's city council meeting, the MTA announced that it plans to replace its streetcars to Arlington with busses, which would run through the Square rather than under it, as now. Mayor Foley oppose this, saying that the MTA could well run all its vehicles under the Square and thus relieve surface congestion. Sullivan isn't too happy with the MTA, either.

Foley also chided the MTA for refusing to allow a parking garage to be built over its car barn at Boylston Street and Memorial Drive. Several city efforts to inaugurate such a proposal have collided with the MTA's insistence on keeping its parked streetcars radiant with sunshine or wet with rain rather than covered with parked automobiles.

This site and possible others along Mt. Auburn St. are considered quite suitable for a multiple story garage by James F. Clapp, Jr. '31, a member of the Boston firm of architects Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson, and Abbot who have designed most of Harvard's building for the last century.

A parking garage need not be an unsightly concrete lump, Clapp emphasized. At relatively little extra cost, he said, a veneer can be affixed to the building which will give it character and beauty. He estimated the cost of such a garage at anywhere from $2,500 to $3,000 per car space. A garage above the car barn would be roughly $200 more per space because of the suspension problem, Clapp added.

Funds are sparse at City Hall for construction of any parking facilities around the Square, and no one there is looking very hard to find any. Martin, in his campaign platform, advocates seeking federal funds to build a bomb shelter under the Cambridge Common. Once safely nestled near the bowels of Radcliffe's downtown campus, Martin would then slyly convert the shelter into a parking garage.

The New Haven city fathers last year also contemplated going underground in order to cope with Yale. A parking garage was contemplated under the New Haven Green, but was abandoned when it was discovered that the Green is an old burying ground and that the city didn't own the Green anyway.

A Definite Luxury

The University, although it has on several occasions discussed garage construction with its architects, does not have any plans for undertaking the project, according to Pyne. Funds are lacking and Harvard feels that parking is essentially the student's individual problem, he added. Undergraduates and parents are reminded each summer in a University letter that cars are a definite luxury, except in a few special cases, and that the University feels no more responsible for providing parking facilities than for greasing transmission.

Pyne noted that all available space on University property is being utilized to alleviate the situation, but such space is, of course, severely limited. No restrictions, however, are envisaged on undergraduates' privileges of bringing their cars to Cambridge, he said.

Councilman Morton claims that enforcement arrangements include letting Harvard and city police walk the streets, arm in arm, ticketing student and local cars alike, giving no quarter, asking none. University police will tag cars illegally parked on University property or obstructing University facilities while the Cambridge police will happly tag anyone. Morton admits that this is a somewhat sporadic arrangement.

A realistic solution to traffic problems must, Morton added, take into account all the factors and plan accordingly. He urges revising the all-night parking ban to permit parking on streets which are wide enough to hold parked cars in addition to moving traffic.

A multiple story garage on the Brattle Square lot and utilization of all other available space in the area would also brighten the picture, while a 1500-2000 car garage over the MTA car barn would be a major step toward a long-range solution, Morton said.

If used for student parking, a garage would pay for itself in anywhere from 40 to 60 years, depending on charges. Normal amortization rate is 20 years, which would make any private investor reluctant at best to build the facility. The University can, however, be assured of continuous use of a garage and thus of definite, if slow repayment of any initial outlay.

With the anticipated increase in the number of cars, any but large and accessible facilities would be only only temporary and inadequate stopgaps. Even if the city allows overnight parking in some areas, the streets around the University, among the narrowest in the city, cannot safely hold their present load, much less any increase.

But today, tomorrow and next week, cars are parked, traffic is crawling, streets are jammed, authorities are lethargic, students are indifferent and the problems multiply