New parking meters are in the process of being installed on Tremont Street, after street renovations that began in 2018 left local small businesses without dedicated customer parking for years. Business owners, although glad to be rid of the inconvenience of weekend construction, are concerned about how a lack of community input will impact the project’s functionality.

“The information was given to us pre-pandemic, so things got thrown all out of whack,” said Philip Saul in an interview, owner of SAULT New England clothing boutique at 577 Tremont Street and president of the South End Business Alliance (SBA). “It's a lot of asking, asking, asking and getting an answer, but then that answer, especially within a timeline, comes and goes and then asking again and then it’s a new answer.”

The renovations consolidated the four-lane road into two vehicular lanes and two dedicated bike lanes, with street parking spots buffering the bike lanes and sidewalks from the traffic. Meaning that a doubleparked commercial delivery vehicle, or even a delivery app driver assuming a quick stop, has been a significant cause of disruption to the flow of traffic over the recent meter-less years.

Prior to the renovations, Tremont Street was in the top 3% of streets in the city for pedestrian crashes. By creating distance between the vehicular traffic and the bike lanes and sidewalks, the city is hoping to create a safer area by slowing down traffic.

“The new lights are great. It's very pedestrian friendly. I would probably say the traffic patterns are a bit challenging during peak times, lots of backups, lots of horns,” Saul said. “There’s only one lane of traffic and there’s no real place for people to pull off, because there’s been no parking meters.”

Meter installation began on Tuesday and will be completed by February 14. The previously existing parking meters have been absent since renovations began, making parking a free-for-all that business owners say hurt their appeal to customers.

“As a small business owner, it is really frustrating when contractors or other business are parking in potential customers’ parking spaces for an extended period of time, blocks of five hours, eight hours, 24 hours. I’m staring at one right now,” Saul said. “We were supposed to get the coin operated [meters] over a year ago, and now we’re having this conversation in February.”

Meters will mostly be active from 10am to 8pm, with a designated commercial loading and unloading window from 7am to 10am. The SBA has also expressed concern to the city about the limited time window for commercial deliveries, however. Many of the restaurants on Tremont are only open and fully staffed during dinner hours, and food deliveries can frequently go over the 15-minute window allowed by the meters.

Saul said that the city’s willingness to listen to residents and business owners and communicate clearly is the missing piece of the puzzle.

“If we could just get the street parking enforcement team to be on in the area to recognize that when those Cisco trucks pull up and they don't have a place to park and they double park, [parking enforcement] can be there firsthand to deal with it, and then they can go back to the city and say, ‘Listen, this is what I'm seeing.’ Because the thing is, we're saying that as residents, and the city doesn't realize it,” Saul said.