Tow zones, residential stickers, commercial spots, valets. . . As if getting around Boston weren't difficult enough, drivers are often plunged into a quandary when they need to leave their cars.
"Can I park here?" wondered Ray Horvanti, who had just stopped in a spot on Newbury Street.
Though the space was metered, the Connecticut visitor was thrown off by a pair of red framed signs that blared "Tow Zone."
"They are ambiguous," he said of the postings, which warned against parking during snow emergencies or on street cleaning days.
Indeed across Boston, figuring out the intention of parking signs can be like trying to read the minds of those who wrote them. How does one interpret "two-hour parking, except resident" or "No parking anytime, 10-minute pickup zone"?
"They should be better defined," said Nikki Christo, a longtime South End resident who still has trouble figuring out where she can and can't park.
"It changes all the time," she said. "One day you can park, the next day you can't. It's like gambling on getting a ticket."
Considering that defining and explaining the numerous parking rules takes up 16 pages of the city's 49-page traffic rules handbook, it may come as no surprise to hear that the city has more than 342,000 signs, the bulk of which refer to parking.
"Yes, we have too many signs," said City Councilor Salvatore LaMattina, who oversaw operations for the city's Transportation Department until his election in 2006.
"Yes, it's confusing," he said. "But unfortunately, we have to regulate curb space. . . . People want signs for everything."
But the signs sometimes defy common sense, or, in the case of one on Springfield Street in the South End, any sense at all. The sign declares two-hour parking during the day but then says, "except residents," and has an arrow pointing down the street. Does that mean residents aren't allowed to park there? Or that they can park there but only at night? And what of the arrow? It seems to indicate two-hour parking for everybody in the direction it points. But a visitor testing that hypothesis received a $40 ticket.
Part of the problem: a partner sign indicating the end of a visitor parking zone is missing, according to city parking officials.
A handicapped parking sign near Downtown Crossing poses a similar question. With no arrow to give guidance, where is the handicapped spot? While it might be logical to think that a handicapped parking sign indicates a single space is off-limits for those without special plates, that logic will yield a $120 ticket. If such a sign has no arrow, parking officials explained, the restriction extends down the block or until the next break in the curb.
"We tell people they really need to check up and down the street," said Jim Mansfield, spokesman for the Transportation Department.
But checking up and down the street can be a dizzying adventure in decoding. Before parking on Hanover Street in the North End, drivers have to read through a laundry list of parking regulations posted on signs. A single space can change its parking status as many as four times in a day - starting as a space reserved for commercial deliveries in the morning, switching to two-hour parking during daytime hours, then serving the supper crowd as valet parking only.
"We do that because parking in the city is extremely limited," Mansfield said.
Figuring out the rules on the street is trickier than deciding who has the best pasta dish, cafe owner Michael Spencer said.
"Probably four of every 10 people that come into the North End don't understand the signage," he said.
Multiple signs harried Alexandra Richards, who was in town last week from Windsor, Maine, with her two young sons, who are both disabled. Though her car has a handicapped sticker, she was perplexed by signs for street cleaning next to handicapped spots when trying to find a place to leave her car overnight.
"The signs are very confusing," she said. "I asked three police officers and even they didn't know if it was legal to park."
Her husband, Kit MacGregor, was just glad it was his wife who had to deal with the parking.
"If it was me, I would have ended up ticketed and towed," he said. "Because I wouldn't have understood the signs and I wouldn't have gone through as much effort to find out."
Tania deLuzuriaga can be reached at deluzuriaga@globe.com.
