Residents of Chestnut Street and the streets around it say the state’s Tobin Bridge work has taken more than 100 of the parking spots they depend on, and that the few spots left flood with water that smells of sewage. “Where does the city expect residents to park when they keep taking away parking?” one resident asked in the Chelsea, MA What’s Happening group this week. She wrote that people who get home from work at 1 a.m. have nowhere to leave a car, and that she is dreading winter. The post drew 42 reactions, and the first comment was from a neighbor who said she had raised the same complaint earlier and been told to stop crying.
What is going on under the bridge
The Tobin Bridge and the Chelsea Curves section of Route 1 have been under some form of state construction for most of the last decade, and the staging areas for that work sit on the Chelsea side, in the streets below the viaduct. Construction staging takes street parking because that is where the equipment, the trailers and the crews’ vehicles go.
What residents do not have is a date. We have asked MassDOT’s Tobin Bridge project office three questions: which contract is using the spaces below the bridge near Chestnut Street, how many on-street spaces it displaces, and when they are scheduled to return. We have asked the city’s parking office whether any temporary resident parking accommodation exists for the affected streets, and the Department of Public Works about the standing water, which residents describe as smelling of sewage and which, if that description is right, is a catch basin or sewer problem rather than a construction one.
We will update this article when either agency answers. If you live on one of the affected streets, we would like to hear from you at [email protected]. A photograph of the standing water, with the date, would help.