Off the Streets

The latest report on the Harvard parking problem, recently released without comment by the Administration, contains grandiose schemes and a few specific small-scale proposals to relieve the present parking space shortage. But the long-range plans in the report seem handicapped by their cost and the minor changes cannot accommodate all the cars around the University. It can only be concluded from this report that the University cannot offer parking spaces for all student and faculty cars and that some sort of night parking must be allowed on the streets of Cambridge if the problem caused by the great influx of automobiles is to be solved realistically.

The Parking Development experts do not claim to have a formula for clearing all University cars off the streets, at least not right away. They merely hope to raise the percentage of student, faculty, and employee cars the University can accommodate within a year, from the present 54 percent to the 85 percent goal.

Some of the proposals in the report, such as a more unified and efficient system of automobile registration, seem practical and could be carried out by the Administration as the report proposes. Besides the appointment of a University parking administrator, the parking experts recommend registration of faculty, employee, and student vehicles and the allotment of specific parking spaces to those commuters who must use their cars to get here daily. Under the present decentralized administration for faculty parking, the survey indicates an average of nine faculty commuters assigned to five available spaces.

Specific suggestions on the enlargement and streamlining of parking areas, especially in the Law School area, could also be carried out as soon as they received the Administration sanction. But the razing of University-owned and rented houses for added parking space in the area behind Dunster House could take excessive amounts of time and money. Due to the uncertainties of these suggestions, the goal of 1954 extra parking spaces probably could not be reached by next September.

The parking survey company's long-range plans seem today like unattainable castles in the air. It is unrealistic to expect professors and students to switch en masse from cars to motor scooters, although their use by University employees, as the report suggests, could be put into effect. Multiple-story garages, a parking space over the MTA carbarns, or even split-level construction for autos by the University seems unattainable in the near future. Their projects might be valuable investments although even the proposed garage fee of $50 per year would not for a long while defray the costs.

This report is valuable for showing some of the major ways the parking problem can be relieved and for the calendar of the major steps the report-writers believe the University could easily take by September, 1957. This calendar can well serve as the yardstick with which to measure the Administration's willingness and capability to cope with the University's parking problem.