Eight months into a street cleaning pilot program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the number of parking tickets issued has nearly doubled.
In April, the city stopped towing vehicles that were not moved for street cleaning, instead increasing the fine from $30 to $50.
“Our ticketing numbers are way up, about 90% compared to last year,” said John Nardone, Deputy Public Works Commissioner for the City of Cambridge.
He said maybe some residents are deciding to pay the fine rather than move their vehicle.
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“If you have a car that’s in the city and there’s an opportunity that maybe you don’t have to get up in the morning this morning and move my car because a street sweeping vehicle is coming along maybe you just kind of eat that ticket for the month. I think some people have eaten the ticket for a bit more than a month. So, I’m guessing that’s kind of what it is; it’s more of a convenience factor for people. For us it’s not that great and it’s something that we need to really work on changing.”
From April through October this year, the city issued 13,323 tickets to drivers who did not move their vehicles for street cleaning, compared to 8,707 street cleaning tickets issued in 2022.
According to data provided by the City of Cambridge to NBC10 Boston, by November people who were cited during the pilot program paid $538,811 in fines for that April to October time frame, with another $159,550 owed. In 2022, the city collected $295,746 in street cleaning ticket payments.
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“That’s an absurd amount of tickets, that’s crazy,” said Cambridge resident Stefanie Cronin. “I mean in this neighborhood parking is really tough. One day I literally had to go to Star Market and leave my car there because I drove around for 20 minutes and there were no spots that were legal, so I understand that if you don’t go out at the right time or you don’t go right away sometimes there aren’t spots.”
Monday night, Cambridge City Manager Yi-An Huang provided the City Council with an evaluation report of the pilot program. In it, he noted that 1,500 to 2,000 tons of litter, debris, leaves and sediment are removed in a typical year and the volume of material removed is down approximately 10% compared to 2022 through the end of October.
“It’s like a double edged sword,” said Nardone. “In the better months, so in the August, September months, when there is no autumn debris on the road it actually makes sweeping go much quicker because we are not waiting for tow trucks to remove vehicles. On the flip side you get months like this or early spring and it’s a lot more work for the crews. It really is trying to get underneath vehicles that haven’t moved.”
He said the DPW is using leaf blowers to get debris out from around parked cars. According to the evaluation report, this increased the existing $500,000 annual street sweeping contract by 25% to include an additional $125,000 for hand crews.”
One of the recommendations listed in the report is increasing the fine for street cleaning parking tickets to $100.
“There’s a point where there’s a convenience fee for you not moving your car and then it’s like well maybe that’s too much for me not to move my car so the hope is that it’s enough of an incentive to get people to get up and out of bed and move their cars the way they did before,” said Nardone. “It’s still cheaper than the way we did it before--so if you had gotten a $30 fine and then you got your car towed and another hundred dollars and you had to take an Uber to go get that car, the hundred dollars is still a lot more convenient for folks but we hope it’s enough of an incentive for people to move.”
In order to increase the fine beyond $50, the city council must submit a home rule petition to the state legislature for approval.
Some residents say they appreciate the change in policy.
“I received one ticket this past season for street cleaning and that was because I was out of state traveling for work,” wrote Cambridge resident Connor Sullivan in an email. “I rely on street parking as my residence has no parking spots. When I travel, I plan ahead of time on where I'm going to park but there are occasions where it's inevitable I will get a ticket because of street cleaning occurring on back-to-back days. I'm so thankful that it's just a parking ticket and not getting towed. A lot of parking tickets are not due to negligence but due to relying on street parking and other uncontrollable circumstances (like work travel) that cause conflict.”
“As far as street cleaning goes, I am a resident in the Kendall Squar neighborhood and I have noticed that the method of ticketing is far less effective at getting the streets clean,” wrote Cambridge resident Ian McGoldrick in an email. “I also think this method might result in more tickets than before because it's less visible a reminder. Anecdotally, it seemed that seeing cars get towed caused a panic that reminded more people to go out or tell their friends to move their cars. I often noticed police being patient as people ran out of my building to move cars, and I wonder if the tickets are just making the problem less visible. I'd rather see a digital parking sign that lit up or flashed the night before and during street cleaning to remind folks that parking is banned here today.”
Monday night, a majority of the city councilors approved the order for a home rule petition while some expressed opposition to increasing the fine amount.
Cambridge residents are encouraged to sign up for alerts about street cleaning here.
