Drawn by cheaper parking

MBTA's $2 hike gives rivals a lift

Where rail commuters see steeper parking rates, Vinnie Patel sees an opportunity.

Patel owns Fitzgerald's General Store in Southborough, next door to the town's MBTA commuter rail station and its 364-car parking lot. When the T raised its daily rate systemwide by $2 on Nov. 15 - in many cases doubling the cost - Patel came up with a new business plan.

He wants to fill the 80-space parking lot he's planning to pave at his store this spring with commuters drawn by a cheaper rate.

Amy Montalto, for one, would jump at the chance to park there. "I'd do it in 10 seconds," said the Hopkinton resident.

An MBTA spokesman said private parking lots aren't a problem for the transit agency, since they bring more riders to the trains.

But last month's fee increase has sent commuters searching for bargains. Framingham is experiencing high demand for a town-owned parking garage that now offers a better deal than the MBTA's lot next to its downtown station.

Meanwhile, the best parking deal along the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's Framingham/Worcester line has evaporated, after a new Southborough office building made its lots off limits.

Patel envisions charging about $75 a month for weekday parking just a few steps from Southborough Station's entrance, in contrast with the $92 that commuters could be paying this month, with 23 work days, at the T lot.

As Westborough resident Doug Chandler slid four folded $1 bills into a steel honor box at the MBTA lot in Southborough on a snow-flecked morning this month, he said he'd rather pay less at Patel's proposed lot.

"It's basically doubled without changing," Chandler said of the MBTA parking fee. "It's the same parking lot. I don't think they're going to expand the parking lot here."

Fellow commuter Montalto said feeding $4 to the honor boxes four days a week was doubly frustrating, as a financial and a logistical challenge.

"A 100 percent increase is a difficult, steep change," Montalto said, waiting for her train to Boston, where she works at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. She said it would help if the MBTA changed the boxes to make it easier to stuff the dollars into them. "Every minute counts when you're racing to make the train," she said.

Patel said he got the idea as he watched a nightly line of about 100 cars pull into his current lot, formed by drivers waiting to pick up train passengers while skipping congestion in the MBTA lot.

Patel said the $6,000 per month he could earn from commuter parking could be key to his store's surviving the worsening economy. "That's the purpose," Patel said.

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said in a series of e-mails that the MBTA does not consider the prospect of some commuters parking in an alternate Southborough lot a problem. He said the T's lot in Southborough has not operated at 100 percent capacity.

"The MBTA welcomes any private sector efforts that are designed to encourage the use of public transportation," Pesaturo said. "Today's empty spaces will help satisfy tomorrow's demand."

As for the honor boxes, Pesaturo said the MBTA has launched a pilot phone-payment system for daily parking in its Kingston commuter rail lots and its Quincy and Hingham commuter boat lots. Based on how quickly commuters sign up for the phone system, it could be offered at other MBTA parking lots, he said.

And for commuters still wrestling with the honor boxes, where $1 bills are the only form of payment, Pesaturo offered a tip to speed up the process - fold two $1 bills together, and insert them through the narrow slit in pairs.

Meanwhile, in Framingham, the municipal Pearl Street Garage - a third of a mile from the downtown commuter station - is seeing more business since the T's $2 increase, according to Walter Premo, assistant director of building services for the town.

The garage's monthly rate of $65 for Framingham residents had been more expensive than the T, but now is a bargain at approximately 30 percent less for a Monday-through-Friday space.

Even nonresidents, who have to pay $80 per month at the Pearl Street Garage, get a break, with the savings depending on the number of weekdays during a month.

"Sometimes people called complaining the price was too high," Premo said of the town garage. "Now that everybody has their prices doubled, we'll see how often they call."

Pesaturo said he could not offer information on how the new rate might have affected business at the Framingham parking lot, as the MBTA's books for November had not closed. He did say, however, that systemwide the MBTA is "collecting more revenue . . . from parking fees today than it was before Nov. 15th."

Of course, none of the rates are as cheap as the discount some commuters dealt themselves by parking for free at an as-yet unoccupied office building across Route 85 from Southborough Station.

However, the bargain came to an end Dec. 12, when a Southborough police officer on a detail started turning away would-be parkers between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. at the office building, which is owned by High-Tech Real Estate in Cambridge.

Marlene Aron, associate broker at Metrowest Commercial Real Estate, the listing agent for the property, said she has posted temporary no-parking signs in the lots, to be followed soon by permanent signs.

"My owner is concerned with liability," Aron said. "And she's going to post signs that if they park there, they will be towed."