You don’t need to drive a car or own a parking garage to add to Boston’s traffic woes.

Thanks to modern technology, you can do all that from the comfort of your home on your smart phone.

In the third and final installment of its data-laden survey of the region’s brake-light-hued congestion problem, the Boston Globe focused on apps.

GrubHub, Uber, Amazon, and their competitors can hide the secret sauce of their computer codes, but out on the streets everyone can see the cogs of their delivery systems at work, and it often isn’t pretty.

One nondescript UPS delivery truck racked up 238 tickets in the first half of this year, and spent the majority of at least one recent weekday stopped illegally as it made the rounds “delivering the goods to satisfy our insatiable need to get everything we want, whenever we want.”

It is just one example of the public outsourcing traffic. The elegant apps that have become synonymous with convenience are creating a heavy toll of gridlock on the roads that carry all the meals, products, and passengers.

The story written by Nicole Dungca – who is on her way to the Washington Post – suggests that new fee structures might help. Jacking up the price of ride-hailing isn’t a new idea, but Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Boston’s former chief information officer, proposed a novel way to pump the brakes on the booming food delivery industry. Call it congestion pricing for ordering in.

“How would I start to think about policies that don’t say, ‘You can’t have food delivered at 5:30,’ but say, ‘Hey, maybe you should pay a little more on that,’ as a way to encourage people to be thoughtful?” Franklin-Hodge mused.

Boston’s current arrangements with some companies facilitate traffic-clogging behavior in exchange for lucrative ticket revenue. The story documents how UPS and others have deals that allow them to amass parking violations without risking a boot that would put a truck temporarily out of service.

Many lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Baker have been resistant so far to the idea of using congestion pricing on all drivers to limit the amount of rush hour traffic in the busiest parts of Boston, but the new growth in app-dispatched meals and rides could offer a more limited subset of drivers on which policymakers could experiment with new approaches.  

One irony of our current predicament is that smartphone apps made travel by transit – especially bus – much more convenient and pleasant than the bad old days when paper schedules provided the only solid information about how to get from A to B. But apps have made on-demand chauffeurs and online shopping even more convenient, marginalizing the MBTA among other things.

The Globe’s story makes it plain that as those types of services have skyrocketed, the slick code underpinning them often mashes up poorly with the current configuration of Boston’s streets.

The experience of one Uber Eats driver exemplifies that. Juan Reinoso was making a pickup at a Sweetgreen in the heart of bustling Harvard Square, where the parking shortage predates the internet era.

“See, what are you supposed to do in this situation?” Reinoso asked. “It’s just the way that Boston is made.”

The Globe documents his not-so-innovative solution: “He settled on temporarily blocking a crosswalk in front of a fire hydrant, before dashing out of his car to pick up a salad order for his next customer.”

ANDY METZGER

BEACON HILL

Lawmakers crammed a lot into the final hours of their last formal session of the year — education investments, curbs on distracted driving, a ban on flavored tobacco products. But they failed to pass a mandatory budget bill, and that had them pointing fingers at each other. (State House News)

For nearly a decade, Concord resident Peggy Brace has sought to enshrine into law the right to hang clothes out to dry. (WGBH)

Concerns on police bias linger after the Legislature’s distracted driving vote. (CommonWealth)

Some find the Massachusetts state flag offensive, and Newburyport resident Richard Banks has designed an alternative. (Gloucester Daily Times) 

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

The Boston City Council passed an ordinance that overhauls the process for approving marijuana licenses, creating a city board to review applications rather than having the process controlled entirely by the mayoral administration. (Boston Globe) 

Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz meets with business leaders to discuss how to deal with panhandling on the municipality’s streets. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

Creditors, parents and former employees hope that a bankruptcy filing by Cape Cod Child Development will explain how the early childhood program fell apart. (Cape Cod Times) 

After 84 days on the picket line, trash collection drivers in Marshfield have ended their strike and quit their jobs with Republic Services. Their union, Teamsters Local 25, said the workers will be given new jobs in “Teamster-covered industries” with union pensions and benefits. (Patriot Ledger)

A skull found in the woods of Blandford is determined to be Milton Eldredge, who was reported missing more than five years ago. (MassLive)

Officials in Danvers made a mistake on a spreadsheet that made it look like taxes would rise 9 percent, but they are actually rising an average of 4 percent. (Salem News) 

WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

President Trump’s ambassador to the European Union linked the president, Vice President Pence, and other top administration officials to an effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rival in exchange for a White House meeting and military aid. (Washington Post) Globe columnist Joan Vennochi pronounces the testimony devastating to Trump and “his cronies,” though it’s not clear that Republicans are seeing it that way.

Trump boasted about his visit to Texas yesterday to oversee the opening of an Apple manufacturing facility, but that operation opened six years ago. (New York Times) 

ELECTIONS

The Globe’s James Pindell says last night’s Democratic presidential debate was too muddled to have a clear winner, but he concludes Amy Klobuchar had the best night. 

John Leahy appears to have the votes from his fellow city councilors to become mayor of Lowell. (Lowell Sun) 

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Despite its dramatic slide, General Electric is still making good on its promise to boost local workforce development efforts, starting with an announcement today in Lynn of a $2.5 million grant to several North Shore high schools. (Boston Globe)

Rhode Island-based tech company SecZetta Inc. is looking to relocate to Fall River and double its workforce over the next few years. (Herald News) 

Developer Don Chiofaro says he’s ready to go on the 600-foot tower he’s been angling to build for years on the site of the Boston Harbor Garage. (Boston Globe)

New Bedford seafood company Captain Dan Eilertsen’s Nordic Inc. is working with a Fall River fish processor, tech juggernaut IBM, and a California restaurant company to use blockchain technology to track scallops from ocean to table. (Standard Times) 

EDUCATION

A federal appeals court panel ruled that Massachusetts law does not require a private college to provide an accused student the opportunity to cross-examine his accuser, giving Boston College the go-ahead to suspend a student accused of sexual assault. (WBUR)

As demand for mental health services on college campuses rise, the schools scramble to keep up. (WGBH)

HEALTH/HEALTH CARE

Dr. Andrea McKee says the potency of vaping spurs fear for the lung health of the next generation. (CommonWealth)

TRANSPORTATION 

Transit was touted as a key to growth for Gateway Cities at an event in Worcester sponsored by MassINC, the parent of CommonWealth. (Telegram & Gazette)

There’s no consensus yet on how the state should go about paying for an ambitious $10-to-$29 billion plan to dramatically improve the commuter rail. (WBUR)

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

A Rhode Island official with deep knowledge of the fishing industry applauds the decision by the region’s wind farm developers to adopt a common layout for their projects. He points out, however, that Vineyard Wind is now doing what his agency urged the company to do two years ago. (CommonWealth)

CASINOS/MARIJUANA

One year after marijuana went on sale in Massachusetts, there are 32 stores open across the state. That’s far fewer than had been expected and sales are bringing in about one-third of the tax revenue predicted in the early months. (Boston Globe) The state’s Cannabis Control Commission says marijuana consumers bought an average of more than $1 million worth of marijuana products each day. (State House News) 

MEDIA

A Northeastern University School of Journalism study looks at 10,000 news articles to see how controversy-driven presidential election coverage really is. (Media Nation) 

A report from PEN America says the collapse of the newspaper industry has created crisis in local news coverage across the country. (New York Times)