The city declared a snow emergency on Jan. 25 this year, and then again in February, lifted on the 24th. Both times our phone lit up with the same call: my car's gone, where is it. Nine times out of ten it wasn't stolen. It was parked on a posted snow emergency artery while a plow needed the lane.
Here's the run-through we'd give a neighbor. Work it top to bottom the night before the snow, not the morning of.
Before the first flake
- Find out whether your street is a posted artery. The signs are already up year-round — they only mean anything once an emergency is declared. If there's one on your block, your car cannot stay there. Ticket and tow, and the plow crews don't wait around.
- Claim a discounted garage spot early. The city opens up resident-sticker garage parking at a reduced rate during declared emergencies. The good garages fill fast, usually the afternoon before. This is the single cheapest move you can make and most people skip it.
- Test the battery. A battery that cranks fine in November will quit at 8 degrees. If it's slow to turn over now, replace it now. Cold snaps take out weak batteries in clusters — we run jump calls back to back for two days straight after every hard freeze.
- Photograph where you parked. Street, plate visible, time stamp. It costs nothing and it settles arguments later.
- Know your own city line. Brookline and Cambridge write their own parking and towing rules and use their own contractors. A Boston sticker means nothing once you cross over. If you park in Brookline to dodge a Boston ban, you've just traded one problem for a different one.
Space savers: the rules actually differ by neighborhood
This is where people get it wrong, confidently.
- Space savers are legal only after a declared snow emergency — not before it, not during a random flurry. A cone out on a dry Tuesday is just litter.
- The clock is 48 hours after the city lifts the emergency. Remove it by 6 p.m. on the second day, and DPW takes anything still sitting there.
- South Boston: allowed, within that 48-hour window. Southie takes the tradition seriously and so does everyone else on the block.
- South End and Bay Village: banned. Strictly. Those neighborhoods opted out and the city enforces it. Put a chair on Shawmut and it's gone, and you've annoyed people for nothing.
The savers themselves aren't a towing issue — but the fights they start are. We get blocked-driveway calls all winter from someone who moved a cone, parked, and came back to a very determined neighbor.
If your car's already gone
- Check the plate lookup first at cityofboston.gov/towing/search before you assume theft. Or call the Boston Police Tow Line, 617-343-4629.
- City tow lot is 200 Frontage Road, South End, 02118. Staffed Mon–Fri, 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., with automated release kiosks running 24/7 — useful when the storm ends at 2 a.m. Lot line is 617-635-3900.
- Budget $90 for the tow, plus $3 an hour storage capped at $15 a day. Paying by card adds 2.5%.
- If BPD ordered the tow, clear it at the station first. The private company will not release your car until you have. People drive to the lot, wait, and get sent back across town. Do it in the right order.
Private lots are a separate animal
Different rules apply when you're pulled off private property — an apartment lot in Allston or one of the triple-decker back lots in Brighton. The DPU caps an involuntary trespass tow at $132 and storage at $35 per 24 hours on a non-commercial vehicle, under 220 CMR 272.00. And there's the drop fee: if you get back before the truck has left, they have to release the car for no more than half the tow price. Argue that one calmly and cite it. It's real.
There's a bill in the current session, S.2235, backed by MASSPIRG and a few Boston councilors, that would make towers photograph a car before removal, let you grab your belongings even if you can't pay the whole bill, and require card acceptance. Pending, not law. Don't count on it this winter.
Two things about the roads themselves
Storrow Drive underpasses pond in heavy rain and then freeze once the temperature drops behind the storm. Low-riding cars stall in that standing salt water, and a jump won't fix a soaked car — that's a flatbed. Same with the low spots along Morrissey Boulevard, which floods on king tides in clear weather because the road was built too low a century ago and the water's higher now.
And if you drive an AWD Subaru or a CR-V, which around here is most of you: it goes on a flatbed, not a hook. A wheel-lift on all-wheel drive wrecks the drivetrain. Any outfit that argues with you about that is telling you something.
We run Boston Towing Service through the storms — Southie, the South End, Allston, Brighton, out to Braintree off 93. If you're stuck or you're staring at an empty parking spot, call us and we'll at least tell you which lot to check first.