Students To Retain City Parking Permits

Residents of Cambridge’s Riverside neighborhood, which lies adjacent to Harvard’s southernmost river Houses, asked the Cambridge City Council early last month to no longer grant residential parking permits to Harvard students living in the Houses.

But such a move would be illegal since Harvard students are also Cambridge residents, found a report made to the council its April 29 meeting.

Compiled by the city’s Traffic, Parking, and Transportation Department (TPTD), the report also found that only 37 students of the estimated 3,300 in the river Houses had applied for residential permits this year.

The Riverside Neighborhood Study Committee says the neighborhood suffers from a lack of parking. Massachusetts zoning bylaws require one off-street parking space per unit, but the committee says there is a shortfall of 1,900 spaces, not including Harvard units.

As for on-street parking, the committee says there are only 1,500 spaces available in the area, 800 short of the 2,300 spaces required by the bylaws.

In total, the city would need to provide around 3,000 more parking spaces to meet zoning bylaws.

The parking crunch is worsened by the use of Riverside’s parking spaces by non-neighborhood residents, the city has noted.

Still, area residents said they are concerned about the parking shortage and think that denying Harvard students parking permits will help alleviate it.

They say they hope the University will assist in this effort even if the city is powerless to do so.

“If the city cannot discriminate between students and residents, our hope is that Harvard will remedy the situation,” said local resident Susan Smith.

But it’s unlikely that Harvard can do much to improve the situation.

“People who are frustrated wish that Harvard would solve all of their problems,” Clippinger said. “If you’re living in an urban area, chances are parking is going to be tight.”

Ted D. Malliaris ’03, who has a residential parking permit, said he found the Riverside residents’ request unfair.

“I spend nine months of the year here. I’m an adult and I pay taxes in Massachusetts. I should be allowed to park here,” he said.

Residents first approached City Councillor Henrietta Davis about the permit issue, and she ordered at the April 8 city council meeting a report investigating the situation.

In order to qualify for a residential parking permit, a car must be registered with the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles and its owner must be able to prove residency by presenting a current gas, electric, telephone or cable bill.

Harvard students who are able to meet these qualifications cannot be denied a parking permit.

But in other states the law differs. In Rhode Island, students from Brown and Wales University are not given access to residential parking.

—Staff writer Samuel A. S. Clark can be reached as saclark@fas.harvard.edu.