BOSTON (WHDH) - Double-parking is jamming Newbury Street.
“This street is just a mess,” one Newbury Street visitor said.
Blocking streets in the North End.
“As a resident, its difficult — very very difficult,” one Northender said.
And clogging Charlestown.
“It’s a problem,” one visitor said.
We found problem parkers on Boston’s busiest streets.
Watch as this double-parked S.U.V. on the right…is hit by a passing car.
“It’s bad. If it’s causing crashing – they need to do something about it,” a businessperson said.
“There are places in the city where it is at a crisis level,” Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Boston’s Chief of Streets said.
We showed Franklin-Hodge what our cameras caught.
“Yeah, nobody was injured, but imagine getting through here on a bike.
All this kind of chaos and disruption on the roadway absolutely is a safety hazard for people,” Franklin-Hodge said.
City officials say food delivery and ride-share drivers are among the most common culprits.
“We need the companies that operate these services to step up and be partners in having streets that work for everyone and right now we’re not there.”
Representatives for two major food delivery apps tell 7 Investigates they are working with the city to find a solution.
But it’s not *just* delivery drivers *serving up* these snags.
We saw this City of Boston truck double parked while the driver grabbed food.
“Yeah, it’s not okay. It does not make me happy to see a city employee doing that here or anywhere in the city.
Don’t tell other people it’s okay to do something like that,” Franklin-Hodge said.
Our cameras staked out crowded Boylston Street on five days.
We only saw enforcement officers on one of those days and they were telling double-parkers to move on.
But one thing we didn’t see: any tickets being given out.
“We do ticket and we do enforcement although that isn’t our preferred strategy…. when we write a ticket for somebody doing food delivery it’s the driver that pays. It’s not the company that put them there,” Franklin-Hodge said.
Many commuters feel like they’re the ones paying because this double parking is *driving* them mad.
“There has to be a better way” one commuter said.
City officials say part of the solution could be for more food deliveries to be made on bikes or scooters like this that can park on the sidewalk. They cause less disruption on the streets.
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