Commuter Rail Parking Now $4.00/Day in Newburyport & Rowley

November 17, 2008

On Saturday, November 15, 2008, the MBTA increased the parking rates at all of its parking lots by 100 percent. For commuter rail riders who park in the Newburyport and Rowley MBTA lots, the daily price to park is now $4.00 per day.

Paid Parking Now Being Enforced Seven Days A Week: Prior to this parking rate increase, the paid parking policy was not actively enforced during weekends and holidays. The MBTA has now stated that the “paid” parking will now be enforced seven days a week, including holidays.

Parking Lot Suggestions For The MBTA: You would think that the MBTA would provide some basic benefits to commuters who use their parking lots with this increase. Here are our suggestions/recommendations for the MBTA:

Install Change Machines at all of its unattended lots. This is a “no brainer” and something that should have been implemented when the parking lots were originally built in Newburyport and Rowley.
Install an automated parking system that provides a printed receipt to each commuter. This would eliminate the ongoing and aggravating “mistaken” ticket problems that seem to be endemic to all “unattended” parking lots of the MBTA. This is how it now works: you pay for your parking space and then come home at the end of the day and find a ticket on your windshield that states that you didn’t pay. Plus a late fee charge on top of it! It will take you months of time to clear this up, and then the MBTA Police will still know nothing about it when they put a ticket with a larger fine on your windshield a few weeks or months down the road. What an operation! Maybe everyone should start paying their parking fees by check every day until they resolve the problem.
Provide a monthly parking plan option for ”every day” commuters to avoid all of these ridiculous problems.

The MBTA is the oldest public transportation organization in the United States and it often looks like that is how it is managed today…still mired in the past.