Decades-Old Melrose Parking Ban Will Be Examined Next Week

MELROSE, MA — The city will discuss a proposal to amend or even repeals the decades-old overnight parking ban in Melrose.

The Traffic Commission's Tuesday's meeting has one item on the agenda: "Resident request to repeal the current overnight parking restriction in the City of Melrose and/or amend the existing law so that the prohibition does not apply to vehicles registered to an address within the City of Melrose. " The initial agenda item was solely to discuss repealing the ban, but the resident, Ryan Bagwell, told Patch his actual request was to amend the existing parking ban so that it would only apply to vehicles with registered to Melrose addresses.

"I am making this request for two reasons," Bagwell wrote to the Traffic Commission. "First, this antiquated ban is overly broad and I have been unable to identify a concrete reason for its existence. Second, on-street parking provides natural traffic calming, and permitting overnight parking will make it more likely that residents will park on streets during the daytime and evening hours."'

The parking ban has been in effect since at least 1932, according to city officials who dug deep into the annals of Melrose history. According to some people, still has a place in modern-day Melrose.

"Melrose started to expand in the 1970s and people liked the look of a nice town," City Councilor Peter Mortimer said. "If people have to keep their car in overnight, then when they come home at 4 or 5 in the afternoon they tend to pull it into the driveway. It was an attempt to have people put their cars in the driveway."

Mortimer said it boosts the aesthetics of streets in Melrose, but also serves other purposes, such as allowing for emergency vehicles to drive through and helping crack down on illegal apartments and even crime by keeping a rough account of the usual vehicles on any given street.

"There's 90 miles of road in Melrose — when you drive the same 90 miles week after week year after year you start to know all the cars. When a strange car shows up, you run the plate and see if someone has a record," Mortimer, who was a police officer for nine years, said.

Bagwell disagrees, saying those issues either don't connect to parking or should be handled through other avenues, such as the zoning laws addressing potential illegal apartments.

"None of those reasons provides adequate justification to ban overnight parking," he wrote in the letter.

The Traffic Commission meets Oct. 22 at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.