Barriers at the Beach: State and town rules limit access to Massachusetts shoreline

It’s called the Bay State. It has roughly 1,400 miles of coastline and a world-famous tourist magnet called “the Cape and Islands.”

Massachusetts should be a beach lover’s paradise, but access to the state’s shores is deeply uneven. Entry to most beaches is dependent on personal wealth, your home zip code and a shrinking allotment of “visitor” parking spaces clustered far from the water and a system of parking restrictions aimed at out-of-towners.

Just 12% of the state’s beaches are open to all members of the public, according to a coastal land inventory done by the state more than 30 years ago — the last estimate the state ever attempted, when the state had about 1 million fewer residents. That small percentage of public beaches often draw crowds so big on sunny days that parking lots fill to capacity, turning away carloads of disappointed travelers and people trying to seek ocean relief from hot temperatures as climate change has steadily increased the number of summer days that reach high temperatures over 90 degrees.

Beach access is also — perhaps unsurprisingly — an issue of racial inequity. The state’s urban beaches are free and easily accessible, but some of the beaches located in more racially and ethnically diverse communities such as Boston, Lynn and Quincy are also more prone to bacterial contamination that poses a health risk, sometimes forcing beach closures.

Now, three decades after state leaders sounded an alarm about the lack of public access to Massachusetts’ beaches, two state lawmakers are renewing the push to demand a bigger public foothold.

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