Boston Considers Eliminating Parking Requirements

The Boston City Council held a meeting to discuss eliminating minimum parking requirements in an effort to more closely align development with modern parking needs and reduce the cost of building new housing. 

As Christian MilNeil explains in Streetsblog Mass, Boston’s outdated parking rules mean the city approves thousands of largely unneeded new parking spots every year. “Frequently, the number of new parking spaces exceeds the number of new apartments and homes that developers build within the city limits – an imbalance of investment and real estate that exacerbates the city's housing shortage and congestion problems.”

According to MilNeil, “In 2023 alone, Boston's planning agency approved 69 large development proposals that would build enough parking to store up to 8,053 more cars into the city – enough to fill all eight lanes of the Southeast Expressway (I-93) with bumper-to-bumper traffic from the Neponset River to downtown Boston.”

An article in Boston Business Journal notes that the city reduced parking requirements for affordable housing in 2021. At Tuesday’s meeting, the council heard public testimony on the issue, though a vote is “not imminent.”