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Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

nytimes.com

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Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#31

Post by yabadabadoes »

Spooky23 wrote: post #6
otoburb wrote: post #2

>> "In Chicago, neighborhood parking costs residents $25 a year; in Los Angeles, as much as $34; in Washington, $35; and in Portland, Ore., $75. In Boston, a pass for neighborhood parking is free, but officials are considering charging people with one car $25, and more for second and third cars." The area highlighted in the article is the Upper West Side in Manhattan, which is a primarily residential area and not a c…

My city (NOT New York City) did residential parking in a couple of areas. It helped eliminate the issue of certain workers in nearby-ish businesses stalking residents. But, parking still sucks, and it hurt businesses significantly. Probably half of the restaurants in the area that I'm thinking of closed down after the parking change. Although the rules are fairly lenient (2-hour parking is permitted in most places),…

Given how bizarre the US is, I suspect the only option in most cases is to assign the rights to spaces to the adjacent buildings and then use them as a factor in value and therefore local tax.

Once this is done, there's no place to park at virtually everyone's destination and a few people end up paying a lot up front and in tax for multiple spaces while everyone else gives up on cars..

The end result is a much more substantial effective road tax while avoiding all the reasonable compromises.

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#32

Post by ericd »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #27
jinushaun wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not visit Queens, Bronx or Manhattan beyond 110 very often. They have extensive car ownership. I don't think anyone would call them rich.

True, we should be careful to not conflate "Manhattan" with "New York City". That said, I agree with OP's comment within the context of Manhattan . Anyone who owns a car there is very wealthy, even within the context of a wealthy city. (I don't agree with pegging the divide at 110th street, that's much too low.)

Anecdotal, but my relatives who live/grew up in the outer boroughs call Manhattan “the city”.

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#33

Post by whatisthiseven »

stefan_ wrote: post #5

You never hear a peep about street parking in the NY Times unless it can be framed as some sort of existential class struggle question and great historical social justice dilemma, all or nothing. Meanwhile there are some 140000 "parking placards" in NYC that are abused with great abandon by a privileged class of state workers to park wherever the fuck they want, with enforcement curiously missing. Here is a tip for a…

You mean like these three articles on it from the NYT?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/21/nyregion/parking-placards...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/nyregion/parking-ticket-s...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/26/nyregion/the-new-math-of-...

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#34

Post by rdmond »

lg wrote: post #25
rdmond wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody who lives on the Upper West Side is driving to work. They circle looking for spots when they have to move their cars for street cleaning and when the get back Sunday night from their country houses. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/07/05/new-york-is-really-aw...

as an UWSer who does not know anyone with a "country residence" or who can afford a second residence at all given the exorbitant price of living in this city, there are plenty of other reasons for people to take the car out in the middle of the day on a summer weekend like, say, going to a beach with your chairs and cooler etc which isn't something you can do with public transit, or going hiking someplace not right o…

Sure, but every time NYC "car culture" questions come up, people start wringing their hands about people who need to drive to work. If we're talking NYC that's a low percentage of people who do drive to work (whether they need to is another question) and for the Upper West Side (say, zipcodes 10023, 10024, 10025) very low, 6%-7%.

http://zipatlas.com/us/ny/zip-code-comparison/percentage-pop...

It is less compelling to say that people need free curbside parking so they can go to the Catskills, whether they have a house there or not.

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#35

Post by rdmond »

jinushaun wrote: post #17
rdmond wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody who lives on the Upper West Side is driving to work. They circle looking for spots when they have to move their cars for street cleaning and when the get back Sunday night from their country houses. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/07/05/new-york-is-really-aw...

Car ownership is prevelant everywhere, not just the "rich" neighborhoods. Come visit Harlem, Inwood, Bronx and Queens.

Cars are prevalent because they take up a lot of space, but car ownership is not. Not even 25% of people in Manhattan own car. Even in Staten Island 17% of people don't have a car.

https://blog.tstc.org/2017/04/21/car-free-new-york-city/

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#36

Post by crazygringo »

otoburb wrote: post #2

>> "In Chicago, neighborhood parking costs residents $25 a year; in Los Angeles, as much as $34; in Washington, $35; and in Portland, Ore., $75. In Boston, a pass for neighborhood parking is free, but officials are considering charging people with one car $25, and more for second and third cars." The area highlighted in the article is the Upper West Side in Manhattan, which is a primarily residential area and not a c…

Ideally the city would have to have the courage to assign permits to individual blocks and create permit-only zones that fit the entire number of permits granted, with temporary parking only allowed in a small number of parking spots remaining outside those zones. And it should be hundreds of dollars a year at a minimum -- or even better, auctioned off, which would almost certainly be a thousand or more a year in many neighborhoods.

But nevertheless, increasing city revenue is nothing to sneeze at -- since it will presumably either lower taxes for the rest of us or delay otherwise inevitable increases.

Because the majority of non-car-owning New Yorkers shouldn't be subsidizing residential car owners, which is what happens right now. Car owners should be paying market rate for their parking space, just like I pay market rate for my apartment space.

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#37

Post by davidf18 »

I live and work in Manhattan and there is a great deal of traffic congestion that could be fixed by removing parking spaces on streets that have 1. dedicated bus lanes. 2. bike lanes.

14th St has removed all parking and auto traffic and the crosstown buses are very frequent even on a weekend and convenient.

A lot of traffic can be blocked by delivery trucks that are double parked on streets which have parking on both sides.

One reason is that the trucks are too wide for the city streets. There should be a mandated by law maximum width on delivery trucks for NYC that are no wider than an SUV or other wide car. Instead of making the trucks wide, make them long and narrow.

That way, even if the delivery trucks like Fedex, UPS, Freshdirect, etc are double parked, they don't block the entire street.

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#38

Post by lg »

rdmond wrote: post #34
lg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as an UWSer who does not know anyone with a "country residence" or who can afford a second residence at all given the exorbitant price of living in this city, there are plenty of other reasons for people to take the car out in the middle of the day on a summer weekend like, say, going to a beach with your chairs and cooler etc which isn't something you can do with public transit, or going hiking someplace not right o…

Sure, but every time NYC "car culture" questions come up, people start wringing their hands about people who need to drive to work. If we're talking NYC that's a low percentage of people who do drive to work (whether they need to is another question) and for the Upper West Side (say, zipcodes 10023, 10024, 10025) very low, 6%-7%. http://zipatlas.com/us/ny/zip-code-comparison/percentage-pop... It is less compelling to…

I would certainly support resident parking permits. I don't think many people need to commute into the UWS for work by car, since of course the entire neighborhood is hooked up to transit endpoints that have their own parking, which is not necessarily true for the places that UWSers commute to.

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#39

Post by Grazester »

ericd wrote: post #32
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, we should be careful to not conflate "Manhattan" with "New York City". That said, I agree with OP's comment within the context of Manhattan . Anyone who owns a car there is very wealthy, even within the context of a wealthy city. (I don't agree with pegging the divide at 110th street, that's much too low.)

Anecdotal, but my relatives who live/grew up in the outer boroughs call Manhattan “the city”.

Thats only if you live in NYC you refer to Manhattan as "the city" but we very well know that New York City consist of all 5 boroughs

Re: Could New York City Eliminate Free Street Parking?

#40

Post by JumpCrisscross »

neovive wrote: post #11

More than residential parking, I feel that double-parking for deliveries, drop-off/pickup, etc. is a major contributor to traffic and congestion. I like the idea mentioned of flex-zones that can be used for different purposes and perhaps address some of these concerns. Unfortunately, allocating parking spaces is a zero-sum game.

> double-parking for deliveries, drop-off/pickup, etc. is a major contributor to traffic and congestion

If half the street weren’t off limits due to parked cars, traffic could easily route around such disruptions.

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