Inventory and Analysis of the Downtown Boston Parking Freeze

Millions of Americans live in urban areas where air pollution presents serious health concerns. Under the regulations of the Clean Air Act, the City of Boston established a plan to reduce local air pollution by implementing a parking freeze that capped the number of public off-street parking spaces in downtown. The goal of our project was to assist the Boston Air Pollution Control Commission in improving parking freeze regulations that must combat vehicular emissions while supporting the transportation needs of businesses, residents and commuters. Our team completed a comprehensive inventory of the downtown freeze zone, created a geographic information system layer of the collected data on BostonMaps and developed a set of recommendations for parking freeze and data management strategies.

Students: Nivers, Storie C.; Smith, Ian M.; Vacheishvili, Nata; Zhang, Xinyuan S.

Project Advisors: Melissa Belz and Seth Tuler

Sponsor:  Boston Environment Department