Underwater garages for Boston? Floating an idea to solve a nagging challenge

Finding a parking space in much of Boston and its surrounding cities and towns can be a daunting task, to say the least. The reason is simple: Too few parking spaces for too many cars.

While transit-oriented development and a better-maintained (and expanded) T might be the better options, there is another way to alleviate the Boston area’s parking crunch: Underwater garages.

Hey, they’ve worked in Europe. The Globe’s Matt Rocheleau details successful underwater-garage projects in Amsterdam and Copenhagen—and then details why they might not work in Boston:

[A] project would face more regulatory hurdles than standard garages and probably would require approval from numerous municipal, state, and federal agencies.

Among the myriad concerns that would need to be addressed: the project’s potential impact on the marine environment; whether it would affect boat travel; how to build it around existing infrastructure, including Big Dig tunnels and MBTA subway lines; and whether the garage’s entrances would be susceptible to flooding from sea level rise.

Still, it’s an intriguing proposition, given the region’s geography and its long, long history of bending that geography to its development will.

What’d you think? Park under the Charles?

• Could underwater garages solve Boston’s parking shortage? [Globe]
• Boston reclamation: The 5 most significant infills in the city’s history [Curbed Boston]
• Which Boston-area neighborhoods are on your T wishlist? [Curbed Boston]