In the world after the pandemic, when my company wanted to get people back into the office, it returned to the weekly staff lunch. Each week a catering company came in and we all gathered in the big shared kitchen. On nice summer days they’d bring in a food truck, and for the most part it worked. But we had some problems, like food waste and the eventual erosion of excitement. People stopped making the effort to come in.
The answer came via DoorDash when the company started offering each person a lunch credit that could only be delivered to the office. People could order individually or collectively within a given time period, and for the most part, this worked. People got the food they wanted, came into the office more regularly, and even started to gather.
But it came at a cost. Not to us within the office, but to the area around us. On delivery day cars would pull up along Bridge Street to drop off food, more cars than usual for that time of day. Some pulled into the parking lot, some just stopped out front.
This issue of delivery isn’t just a problem for a single office, it’s an issue for nearly every aspect of the local economy. For restaurants during the pandemic, delivery became a lifeline enabling them to survive. And today it remains a consistent source of revenue.
Some local restaurants never returned to full seating, some formalized their delivery processes and pickup locations around their traditional service. Hotels are even reconsidering the need for a restaurant, enabling them to rethink how to use their space, since visitors are more likely to order remotely than wander down for a meal.
As Newton looks to the future of its parking regulations and use of the curb within village centers, it will need to consider this changing landscape. We need to think about where Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash will pick up and drop off, and the way people use our village centers. A person may still get there by car, but may not need the parking spaces we have.
The use of these services is rising around the state, including here in Newton. The number of ride-hailing trips that start within the city is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels, according to 2025 numbers. Newton saw nearly 1.4 million rides originate here, up from 1.2 million in 2024. What’s more, nearly 1.5 million ended here, compared with 1.3 million the previous year. On a per capita basis, that’s about 15.5 rides per person starting there, and 16 rides per person ending within the city.
In all, 23 percent of the rides stay within Newton, which is consistent year over year, while in Waltham that’s much higher, at 40 percent and Watertown is much lower at 13 percent. When you add in deliveries from online retail like Amazon, you have a lot of vehicles stopping at the curb.
Smart developers are already making changes, like creating centralized locations for ride-hailing, which helps manage things like double parking or blocking of travel lanes. This also changes the metric for how we zone and consider land use.
When a developer looks to build in the suburbs, parking is a primary concern. Commercial properties usually try to build three to five spaces for every 1,000 square feet of commercial office. In a place like Newton, where land is much more expensive, this is a huge concern. Cities try various things to make it easier, like transportation management associations that help bring people in on buses, but that doesn’t negate the need. A basic fact is that if people need less parking, a developer can use the land differently.
More changes are coming, like self-driving vehicles. But as a city we need to be thinking 50 years into the future. And right now that future looks less like a place where each person drives and then parks, and more like a place where significant numbers get a ride and then just walk away.
Chuck Tanowitz is a Newton resident who has been involved in local economic development for more than a decade. He can be reached at chucktanowitz@gmail.com.