At the end of this month, children clad as Disney characters will take over our streets. But on other nights, the invaders are less charming. As dusk falls in the Back Bay and on Beacon Hill, it’s the valet parking companies that come out and take possession of the streets.

Valet parking services are principally offered on Charles, Newbury and Boylston streets, with a few others scattered about. There are only a handful of valet parking companies in the entire city. Their clients are usually restaurants or clubs. They provide their services on a contract basis.

Boston permits valet parking companies to take over three or four parking spaces to use as a base for their operations. When a car pulls up to the parking stand, an attendant will take the car and, supposedly, park it in a nearby lot or garage. The car owner is charged a fee that covers the cost of the garage parking and leaves some extra for the attendant and the valet parking service.

Customers see valet parking as a convenience. Residents—judging by the calls I get—see it as an annoyance.

Valet parkers consistently pose problems. First, despite regulations to the contrary, valet parkers double- and, occasionally, triple-park cars on the street. This happens on a regular basis during the evening restaurant rush hours, as customers come in more quickly than the valet services can handle them. I have counted, for example, over 20 cars stacked up outside of the Algonquin Club. On Newbury Street, where valet parking services can be found three or four to the block, the double parking reduces the roadway to a single lane and makes the street virtually impassable on weekend evenings. Driving Charles Street, one feels as if the roadway is a slalom course as double parked cars make you weave from one side of the road to another.

Second, valet parkers often park their automotive charges in alleys and residential spaces. The reason for this is simple enough to understand. Attendants keep the difference between the valet parking fee and their cost of parking a car. If that cost can be reduced to zero, the attendant makes more. There have been many cases of cars being left with valet services that have been ticketed (with the ticket, of course, being picked up and thrown away by the attendant). On occasion, valet-parked cars have even been towed when illegally parked in someone’s alley parking spot.

Finally, every valet parking area consumes street space that in most cases would be available for parking. The city’s Transportation Department historically has granted valet parking space to anyone who requests it. As a result, the number of valet parking areas has proliferated throughout the Back Bay and Beacon Hill. Customers of businesses in the area that do not rely upon valet parking find it more difficult to park as, of course, do visitors and residents. Indeed, given that valet parking pitches itself towards a wealthier clientele, one of the problems with the proliferation of valet parking is to make the area less hospitable to those of more modest means.

Why do we have valet parking at all? Why should an essentially private business serving an exclusive clientele be allowed to take over city streets?

Apparently, valet parking was originally limited to cases of genuine need. The restaurant or business had to prove parking was unavailable otherwise and that providing a valet service would not impede with traffic or disturb the area.

But those standards have not been adhered to. Restaurants who did not have valet parking saw themselves at a competitive disadvantage and they demanded the same valet privileges. There was, and is, no logical stopping point.

I find myself unpersuaded that streetside valet parking should be available at all. Suppose valet parking services were banned from city streets. Would customer traffic decrease markedly? I doubt it. Indeed, Charles, Newbury, and Boylston streets might arguably become more attractive to visitors if they were not perpetually jammed with double-parked valet cars.