Over the past few years, I’ve often touched upon the idea that New York City is essentially giving away space for free. Despite wallet-busting rents, obscenely high taxes and a cost of living nearly unrivaled elsewhere in the country, the city has no problem turning over valuable street space to empty parked cars. It’s an ugly inefficient use of space.
The topic reared its ugly head earlier this week when David Greenfield, a Brooklyn Democrat who hasn’t met a car he doesn’t love, proposed a few “solutions” that would open up more parking spaces. He wants to allow parking at broken fire hydrants, paint lines on the ground to delineate the space around hydrants and allow pregnant women to park anywhere as long as they have a note from their doctor. The zaniness abounds.
In response, Streetsblog broke out the data. As the city looks to privatize its parking, there are essentially 81,875 paid parking spaces in New York City. Thanks to the onslaught of muni-meters, that number has grown from 72,010 five years ago.
Now, those numbers may seem high, but a few years ago, Rachel Weinberger attempted to estimate how many paring spaces exist throughout the city. She determined that there are around 3.3-4.4 million on-street spaces, and Noah Kazis offered up a take on these figures:
Using those numbers, only 1.9 to 2.4 percent of all on-street spaces have a meter. Everywhere else, drivers can store their private vehicles on valuable public property at no cost, moving them only when alternate side parking rolls around. That’s an enormous giveaway of public space, and it also makes it harder for drivers to find parking. As long as there’s no price on so much scarce curb space, the search for an open spot is going to be pretty tough in a lot of neighborhoods.
As Infrastructurist notes, this glut of free parking leaves us with problems ranging from ” urban congestion to the environmental impact of building America’s vast parking infrastructure.” Yet, there is a very easy solution that can help the city recoup transportation money while potentially freeing up some space.
The answer: residential parking permits. In cities across the country, residents are not permitted to park for free. Because on-street space is so scarce, cities force drivers to fork over some dough for a precious sticker. In Boston, for instance, the permits are free, but residents must register their cars in Massachusetts. In DC, the parking permit costs a whopping $15 a year, and in Philadelphia, the permits cost $35 and also require Pennsylvania plates.
Walking through Brooklyn, I see cars from everywhere. I can walk the five minutes from my house to the subway and see plates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, New Hampshire, Maine and North Carolina. These cars aren’t going anywhere. Rather, they take up valuable space, and New York recoups no registration fees, license plate charges or parking levies.
The money of course would go to a good cause. NYC DOT could use it to fix the streets; our aging infrastructure could use the infusion of funds as well; the parking revenues could be bonded out for capital projects; or the MTA could always take the dollars. Those who own cars could afford the de minimis fees, and the city would be better off for it.
232 comments
Benjamin Kabak has never met a way to reach into the pockets of NYC’s drivers that he does not love.
I’m getting the impression that Ben dislikes cars. Or drivers. Or both =)
I don’t dislike cars or drivers. I dislike free giveaways. Let me turn this around: What’s the argument for keeping on-street parking free and not requiring NYC residents to register their cars with New York plates?
NYC is the most expensive city in the country. So let’s add yet another expense to those who live, work, shop and pay high taxes. What’s one more tax, right? As for out-of-state plates on NYC cars: go get ’em. It’s illegal and they should register their cars in the state they live in, like the 99% of NY drivers already do, with the resulting ultra-high insurance rates. Just got my insurance bill for my 6 yr old car (no previous accidents, safe driver, 40+ yrs old): $1400 for the year. Pretty steep, no?
Actually, this is at least in part about taking away the expense of subsidizing cars from the people who don’t have one. Have the drivers pay for their own driving. Sheesh.
Well, you could turn that around and say that drivers subsidize mass transit to the tune of millions of dollars (those PA and MTA bridges ain’t cheap, and they ALWAYS run at a surplus). By your reasoning, maybe subway riders should pay the $7 or so that it actually costs the MTA to provide the service. No?
Not that I entirely object to that argument, but it doesn’t cost the MTA anywhere $7/ride to provide subway service. It probably costs closer to $2.50-$4.00 (depending what, if any, capital expenses you include). And that number could probably be brought down. Keep in mind, the average fare is around $1.50, not $2.25.
But in reality, drivers are subsidized a lot more than transit users, and both are subsidized by non-users and pretty much all transportation is subsidized by a byzantine array of cross-subsidies. More importantly, an additional subway user has a much lower marginal cost than another driver on the road. Because I love driving so much, I’d love to pay more to do it instead of sit in traffic!
$4 is if you include all capital expenses, a standard to which highways are never held. Urban drivers pay gas taxes to maintain the Interstates (cf. deeding all transit fares nationwide to Amtrak) and get property taxes to cover urban roads.
On top of what Bolwerk and Alon Levy have said, I don’t know many people who only drive across a toll bridge or tunnel. Most also drive on taxpayer-subsidized streets on either side of the bridge, and many park on the street at either or both ends of the trip. In fact, most trips within the city don’t involve the use of a toll facility at all!
Indeed. And, while there’s a surplus that may go towards transit, what you pay at the bridge mostly goes towards maintaining the bridge – not the wider road system.
You know it’s not free to have people driving and/or taking up street space by parking, right? Those costs aren’t captured in your insurance rates or registration fees.
Ben, you go to Prospect Park on foot or by bike, right? Does the city charge you to do so? Do you pay to get your trash picked up? How much is bike insurance/registration? What’s so hard to understand that, in a highly expensive city, drivers don’t want to hand over even more money than they already do? You really do love to give away other people’s money. Oy.
On one hand you object to having drivers pay for their actions, yet you complain about somebody loving other people money?
And really, walking (or even biking) are not the same as driving. The latter is astronomically more expensive than the former – with more externalities too.
Driving is not free. Drivers already pay enough for their actions.
If that were the case, there would be little or no traffic congestion.
But they don’t even pay enough to cover their own costs.
What you say makes absolutely no sense at all. What does traffic congestion have to do with the amount of money drivers have to pay?
Traffic congestion is determined by the amount of road space, double parking, bottlenecks, number of vehicles on the road, traffic signal synchronization and other factors, not on how much drivers have to pay.
People choose to drive or not depending on their choices. If the choice is between a 90 minute mass transit trip versus a 10 minute car trip, they will still choose the car trip and there won’t be fewer cars on the road and congestion will not decrease no matter now much they have to pay. For most people who drive the choice is clear.
If the charges become unbearable, they will relocate before traveling two hours extra every day to commute.
You make it sound like the extra fees charged to motorists will have an immediate positive effect on mass transit the next day and suddenly everyone will give up their car and switch. What you fail to realize is that there is no guarantee that additional monies charged to drivers will even fund mass transit and won’t just be used to plug the deficit. Remember how lottery money was supposed to fund and improve education? What a joke that turned out to be.
At best it would be 20 years before we would see a single new subway line and that would only affect a miniscule portion of trips anyway.
Yes, the amount of road space indeed. There isn’t much of that, because we subsidize people’s driving instead of making them pay the costs of it themselves. I don’t know if drivers paying 100% of the costs of their own driving would mean no congestion (I’d love to find out), but it would obviously mean less driving.
If some people relocate because we aren’t subsidizing them anymore, why cry about that?
Despite the mindless rants of people like ferryboi, I in fact don’t think mass transit should depend on cross-subsidies from drivers. I think it’s unfortunate that it does to a small extent because it allows entitled drivers to pretend they’re shelling out money for mass transit when in fact they’re the ones who are costing the most.
Bolwerk, I wish people would stop putting words in my mouth to make me look stupid. I guess that is the only way you can “win” an argument, by not sticking to the subject.
First of all, I never was arguing magnitude by stating that pedestrians cause anywhere near the number of accidents auto drivers cause. I was simply responding to a silly remark stating that if there were no cars, it would not be necessary to look where you were going, as if you couldn’t get killed just by falling and hitting your head without any car involved.
Second, this thread started with Ferryboi stating that this charge would just place another unfair burden on New Yorkers who are already overtaxed, which I fully agree with.
Since you don’t want to discuss that, it’s easier to steer the discussion to a point no one was even arguing.
Sorry, Bolwerk,
Comment was meant for JB and I put it in the wrong place.
Insurance, registration, etc. are a consequence of cars killing people. Millions per year, in fact – about 2% of the world’s death rate is car accidents. You don’t need to be trained to walk without causing accidents.
That’s a little extreme. Registration is just a tax by another name. Insurance has a lot of costs layered into it that have little to do with actual driving, such as financing a disfunctional tort law system. Then to note that cars are carnage inducing is also over the top. It implies that we were all living to be vigorous 100 year olds and then cars came a long and started killing us by teh bushel basket. It’s not like that at all. Society has experienced a huge increase in life expectancy post-automobile and I don’t doubt that enhanced mobility has a positive affect on health on an overall basis.
You’re missing my point. It’s not about the overall effect of cars on society; it’s that they’re potentially lethal, and therefore people should be trained in their use. The harder the machine is to pilot, the more rigorous the training and licensing should be: cars require a license and insurance, but nothing like the strict training regime of airplanes.
So every pedestrian looks where he or she is going. No one crosses on a red light and just walks into a car. The driver is always at fault according to you.
Fault has nothing to do with it. Without cars, pedestrians don’t need to look. The need for constant vigilance is one of the problems of cars – and it takes decades for pedestrians to adjust. (Said adjustment process can be seen in a constant decrease in accident fatalities per VMT.)
Now you are being silly. So I guess it’s okay in your world for pedestrians to bunk into each other or knock each other down when crossing the street without looking? That’s not happening in the Times Square pedestrian plaza, so I guess they are still looking when they cross.
Eh, BrooklynBus, they may still look, but they aren’t at jeopardy of losing life and limb if they don’t look — they’re at risk of having to say “excuse me.” And, pedestrians don’t have stopping times of several seconds during which they’ll travel a distance of 25-50 feet; it’s easy enough to stop if someone else gets in your way.
To Bolwerk: People are always in jeopardy so why pick on auto drivers? Look at the 15 people killed on the Mohegan Sun Bus or the near tragedy the other day with the Academy Bus when the driver didn’t pull over when he said he felt ill and the chaperone who luckily was a bus driver, took the wheel. You aren’t proposing to ban all charter buses because of these two incidents, so don’t look for every possible reason to state that cars are evil. Bet you will come back now with statistics citing the number of people killed in car crashes.
I know you think you’re making a point, but you aren’t. What I’m saying is that mechanized transportation is dangerous in the hands of an untrained driver, and therefore requires licensing and insurance. It doesn’t matter if it’s a car, a bus, a train, or a plane, except that the more complex technologies require stricter standards. It’s not the same with feet and bicycles, and it’s telling that the first non-car example you thought of was an unlicensed bus operator.
Well I’m not sure what point you are making. First you blame cars for all evil saying if not for them people could cross the street without looking. When I point out that that comment is wrong because they still would have to look, you start a new discussion that has no bearing on what the subject is: that drivers of mechanized vehicles need to be responsible and others do not have to be. Everyone needs to be responsible whether they drive a bus, truck, car, bicycle or are just a pedestrian. I’m not advocating licensing of bicycles here (maybe only those used for commercial use), but bike riders kill and injure people also and pedestrians cause accidents also. A car might swerve to avoid a pedestrian who is not looking which might cause him to crash into another car.
To make it seem like auto drivers are always in the wrong and everyone else is right is just wrong, so I don’t see what is so telling about me using irresponsible bus drivers as examples. I also never said anything about unlicensed drivers.
So BrooklynBus, you compared getting hit by a car to getting hit by a pedestrian. I think it’s time to stop taking you seriously.
It’s real easy for you to twist what I said.
I said a pedestrian who is not looking where he is going and jumps in front of a car can cause an accident by causing the driver to swerve to avoid hitting him. I suppose you think that couldn’t happen.
I wouldn’t take someone like you seriously who reads what he wants to read just to prove what he wants to believe.
BrooklynBus, your order of magnitude reasoning is deficient.
@BrooklynBus, I would be more than happy to read whatever it is that shows that a large proportion of traffic accidents are caused by “pedestrians who are not looking where they are going and jump in front of cars, causing an accident by causing the driver to swerve to avoid hitting him.” I’m always up for a good laugh.
JB, I wish people would stop putting words in my mouth to make me look stupid. I guess that is the only way you can “win” an argument, by not sticking to the subject.
First of all, I never was arguing magnitude by stating that pedestrians cause anywhere near the number of accidents auto drivers cause. I was simply responding to a silly remark stating that if there were no cars, it would not be necessary to look where you were going, as if you couldn’t get killed just by falling and hitting your head without any car involved.
Second, this thread started with Ferryboi stating that this charge would just place another unfair burden on New Yorkers who are already overtaxed, which I fully agree with.
Since you don’t want to discuss that, it’s easier to steer the discussion to a point no one was even arguing.
@BrooklynBus:
When you’re saying things like “I was simply responding to a silly remark stating that if there were no cars, it would not be necessary to look where you were going, as if you couldn’t get killed just by falling and hitting your head without any car involved.” it’s not necessary for me to put words in your mouth to make you look stupid. If you really want to go back to the original topic, all I have to say is that just because people are used to getting something for free, and happen to pay more than they should in taxes, doesn’t mean they should keep getting that thing for free. It’s not about taxing people, it’s making people pay for what they use. If the government did start charging market rates in return for, say, lowering the sales tax, I think that would be a better deal than what we have now. Of course I don’t necessarily think the city should charge for parking in those spaces, I would be equally happy if they turned parking spaces into sidewalks in neighborhoods with too much pedestrian congestion, or found other ways to ensure the space is used efficiently instead of given away free to a particular portion of the population.
JB:
“When you say things like ‘…as if you couldn’t get killed just by falling and hitting your head without any car involved’ it’s not necessary for me to put words in your mouth to make you look stupid.”
So you’re saying I sound stupid? Well I guess it wouldn’t matter to you when I tell you that my sister fell off her bike and hit her head over six years ago and has spent all that time in a coma. I’m going now to visit her like I do every day. But who cares? How many people does that happen to? Certainly fewer than die in auto accidents every year? Right?
Second, I have no problem with widening sidewalks if they they are truly congested such as was the case on Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn, but not if the congestion is caused by illegal street vendors who have no business being there.
I am perfectly willing to go back to the original topic, so I will ask the same question again: Why are you willing to single out car owners by asking them to pay more? (Doesn’t the City auto use tax already cover the cost of using and parking on city roads already?)
And if you want the City to to start charging for everything that is currently free (and supported by our tax money anyway) such as using a public library or going to a City beach or using our playgrounds? Why are you not advocating additional charges for those services the City is also giving away for “free” as you put it?
Why not single out those people? Why do you single out auto drivers? And please don’t tell me it’s because they are richer and could afford it because if you want the rich to pay more we could always change the income tax structure which would be a fairer way to tax rich people more.
“What’s the argument for keeping on-street parking free and not requiring NYC residents to register their cars with New York plates?”
NY residents are required to register their cars with NY plates. Instead of enacting more BS laws, maybe we should enforce laws that are already on the books.
And city residents already pay an “auto use tax” which supposedly already includes the cost to drive and park your car on City streets.
I’m not sure what this “auto use tax” is, but does it include rent (you know, the same sort of rent one might pay for an apartment or an office) for the space the car occupies?
If not, then it’s missing one of the major costs – probably the major cost – to drive and park your car on city streets.
The auto use tax initially was a $15 annual surcharge added to the state car registration fee just for NYC residents. The argument the City used to enact it was that cars cause wear and tear on City streets by driving on them so they should pay more than non-City residents who don’t use City streets as much. Parking on City streets constitutes using them also. So the auto use tax also includes paying for parking on streets without meters.
Also, when you rent an apartment or office, you are guaranteed use of that space. If the parking space in front of your house was considered “yours” and no one else could park there, perhaps your rent argument would hold some water. However, since parking spots are on a first come first served basis, your comparison to rent is irrelevant. How would you feel if you paid rent for your apartment but when you came home, someone was already sleeping in your bed and you had to sleep on the park bench instead. Would you think it was fair for the landlord to continue to charge your rent?
$15 doesn’t come close! Sorry.
Who’s suggesting that you pay rent for a space that’s occupied by another car? There are plenty of places you can rent a place to sleep on a nightly basis: they’re called hotels. (Granted, hotel rooms can also be reserved in advance.) Or do you can think you can waltz into a vacant hotel room and sleep there for free? Nothing was held for you; you just found a room that wasn’t already in use.
So $15 a year doesn’t come close? So what were you thinking of charging? $200 a year, $500, $1,000 perhaps. Ben stated that DC charges $15 a year for an annual permit. I didn’t see you telling him that was ridiculously low.
So you are not suggesting that you might be paying rent for a space occupied by another car? You are saying that a permit will ensure a space is always available for you? Then you are either proposing a lottery system if the demand exceeds the supply or to auction off spaces to the highest bidder. Yeah, why don’t we do that? Would certainly generate a lot of revenue.
So when the person goes to work and takes his car, the space has to remain vacant all day or it can be used for a pop-up cafe. Who wouldn’t want one in front of their house? Of course, people would have stop their meal in the middle if the owner of the spot comes home and needs to park in “his” space before they finish their meal. Might get someone angry you think? Finding a parking space would be a lot easier under that scenario.
If I understand that residential permit thing, it’s for parking in your neighborhood (borough? city? however it’s done) without paying meter rates. It still doesn’t guarantee you a parking spot.
What what is costs for the spot, charge a rate that would always guarantee some empty spots in a location. That way everyone willing to pay gets a spot.
Bolwerk:
So then what you are speaking of is not a measly charge of $15 a year but more like a fee slightly below what garage would cost, maybe like a $100 a month or $300 you think? And who would buy permits under those conditions? Those who could afford to pay for it or are willing to give up something else like their cable, cellular or internet service or perhaps all three.
And you don’t think that will have a negative effect on the economy with a large number of people saying who needs to live in NY anyway and choose to move elsewhere causing a drop in real estate values and less taxes for the City and even wider ramifications perhaps more than canceling out the gain in revenue from those permits?
Yes, that’s what we need a cIty of the ultra rich supporting the ultra poor. Of course that would never happen because the City would turn all that revenue over to the MTA so that bus service can be tripled and subway lanes could be built next week in all parts of the City so no one will need a car.
Yeah, I support it now.
BrooklynBus: I still don’t buy the argument that people are entitled to free or cheap parking under any circumstances. Are there circumstances where it sometimes makes sense? Maybe, but people need to take some responsibility. If they’re making themselves car-dependent, it’s their fault. And you seem to be (inadvertently?) acknowledging that market costs for spots are well north of what is paid, or even what it costs, to provide the space. Why not let the market decide how much those permits cost? Auction them. You’d get a perfect sense of what they’re worth to drivers.
However, I could buy that a residency could be entitled to a spot that no one else can use in a subdivision. But that opens up another can of worms – like, where do you park visitors? Pricing just seems better to me.
Also, I don’t get this presumption you seem to be making that it’s inherently bad not to own a car. People who want to own a car should live in places where they can afford it. I don’t get to move to Manhattan and demand a subsidized detached house and picket fence, afterall. Why should drivers move to Brownstone Brooklyn and think they’re entitled to a subsidized space and a subsidized trip to Manhattan, even if their transit access sucks?
It’s a safe bet that the cost of subsidizing drivers in a dense urban environment, and not providing an effective transit alternative, is a large part of the reason people are doing exactly what you’re saying: leaving for elsewhere. You keep saying drivers pay a lot to drive. Yes, they do. I keep pointing out non-drivers pay a lot for drivers. Yes, they do. It’s just not cheap to subsidize it.
Bolwerk,
Robert Moses made the mistake thinking that you can build enough roads and parking spaces in a dense urban area to satisfy everyone and not have a decent mass transit system. We all realize the foolishness of that type of thinking. Of course, the only way for a dense area to work is with mass transit.
I already explained who would be harmed by auctioning off park spaces and why it would not be a good idea. And enough of this talk about everyone subsidizing parking spaces because the subsidizing works both ways. Non-transit users subsidize the MTA by paying tolls, their electric bill, their phone bill and in other ways. Transit users also subsidize roads which they also benefit from indirectly. In a perfect world, all taxes and user fees would be dedicated and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But that is not the case.
You ask “Why should drivers move to Brownstone Brooklyn and think they’re entitled to a subsidized space and a subsidized trip to Manhattan, even if their transit access sucks?” But even if they use transit for that trip, it is also subsidized. But that is okay with you.
No one is arguing here that we should not be providing effective transit alternatives. But realistically I do not see how charging for residential parking will make that happen.
First of all, I think you’re missing my point about subsidies. I’m not saying we should never subsidize x. I’m not arguing everyone is entitled to a transit trip to Manhattan or anywhere else. Some trips just aren’t worth subsidizing — the default alternative shouldn’t be a subsidized car trip. Even if it’s worth it, it’s should not be an entitlement — that applies as much to transit as it does to driving. The fiction about driving here is the notion that drivers are doing everything at their own volition, including paying the costs. They’re not. I’m well aware that drivers subsidize transit* to some extent, but they don’t come close to paying for their own costs. Transit users come pretty close. Redirect what drivers pay in tolls towards the roads system, redirect some of the general fund subsidy for driving towards transit — the practical result would be that we’re in the same place we are today. Nothing would work better.
Yes, Robert Moses made that mistake. But leaving the status quo as-is doesn’t fix the mistakes he made.
I don’t know where you addressed auctions, but I wasn’t trying to say they should be auctioned. I was just saying that would tell you immediately about how much the market values the spaces. (That said, I’m not against auctions either.)
Anyway, I thought the residential parking matter was about recouping lost revenue from people who register out of state. It would make sense to me if residents got a fairer shake out of it, even if it means paying more. Paying more for better convenience isn’t always a bad thing.
* How much transit they really subsidize is quite debatable. Given the ludicrous, unnecessary administrative overhead in the MTA, it’s a safe bet drivers are just subsidizing that. Which is probably find with carhead pols, because it makes transit financially look worse than it is.
Bolwerk,
“Yes, Robert Moses made that mistake. But leaving the status quo as-is doesn’t fix the mistakes he made.”
I’m not advocating the status-quo. I’m all for improving and expanding mas transit. The MTA, however isn’t. All they want to do is finish the capital projects they started and continue to streamlining services which doesn’t necessarily make them more efficient. More likely it just will drive more people way from mass transit to cars, livery services, walking and cycling. They are not interested in undertaking one single new capital project. It is more likely that the #7 gets extended to New Jersey before the Second Avenue Subway is completed or extended to Brooklyn.
How do you intend to fix that?
“Anyway, I thought the residential parking matter was about recouping lost revenue from people who register out of state”
Don’t remember reading that and I don’t see why the two should be related. I’m all for going after people who register out-of-state or even out of the City for lower insurance and to avoid the auto use tax.
I thought the idea of residential parking was thought of by communities with good access to transit to prevent outlying communities from leaving their cars all day long in their communities to access mass transit so they can have the parking spaces for themselves. Of course that would never be happening in the first place if major subway stations had park and ride.
In Sheepshead Bay there are 20 park and ride spaces which are taken before 7 AM. There should be several hundred.
For sanity’s sake, I answered you at the bottom again. http://bkabak.wpengine.com/201.....ent-191147
NY residednts are required to register their cars in NY. Many of them don’t. It’s why Boston requires the car be registered in Massachusetts ( I suspect they require it to be registered in Massachusetts at a Boston address ) It’s not onerous for people who are residents since their car is registered at their residence.
Unfortunately car insurance rates in New York City are very high. So people lie and say their car is primarily garaged at their campsite in the Poconos. Where car insurance rates are astoundingly low. Raises rates on people who are honest, both in NY and in PA. It’s enough of a problem that New Jersey has a program to ferret out people who do it.
On street parking spaces are funded with local taxes, People who aren’t lying about where they live should get priority in using them. Or a discount on the parking fees. Or both. One of the ways to do that is with resident parking permits.
Jumping Jesus Christ, you people need to grow up, and stop repeating talking points about “driver hate” you read in illiterate tabloids. It’s not about playground-like “dislike” of cars; that’s how entitled thugs like Marty Markowitz think, not adults. Disliking cars is akin to disliking shovels or umbrellas. Cars are tools. What I, and probably the bulk of New Yorkers, dislike is the misappropriation of what is sometimes a very handy tool, and the unwillingness elected officialdom to do anything about the identifiable, undeniable problems cars create from safety to air quality to economic inefficiency.
Yes, it’s very adult to claim those you disagree with are illiterate.
Something I didn’t categorically do. Do you regard it as “adult” to put words in other people’s mouth too?
So no one is doing anything to make less polluting cars that are safer? The fact is that in some instances mass transit works best and in others it is the car, and until that changes there will always be cars and Mayor Bloomberg has to stop doing everything in his power to make it more difficult, inconvenient and expensive to own and operate one.
Bloomberg has made it more convenient to own one, not less. However little, Bloomberg has actually reduced congestion in some places. And his track record on reducing crashes have made drivers and pedestrians alike safer.
How so has Bloomberg made it easier to own a car and where has he reduced congestion? By increasing parking meter rates every six months, by reducing traffic lanes and replacing them with bicycle lanes? By opposing free metered parking on Sundays? How else?
As far as his statistics, so far all have them have come under fire for being misleading. That goes for his education statistics to his crime statistics. So why should I believe his statistics for reducing congestion or the number of crashes?
It’s just a blip, but it definitely improved after the Times Square changes. Parking meter rates should make it easier to park. Why would you complain about that? Does your time mean nothing to you?
They come under fire as misleading by people who want to live with the fantasy that we can sustain subsidized car rides for everyone. What credible source has called statistics into question? Or shown that bicycle lanes increased congestion?
Improved after the statistics released by the City which I have every reason to be skeptical of. Common sense says that the study area either should have been between 5th and 9th Avenues or river to river. But was it? No. It was from the East River to 9th Avenue, just a little suspicious. Were most of the cars diverted to 10th, 11th and West Street (Henry Hudson)and the City didn’t want to show that? It’s not uncommon for anyone to skew statistics to prove what they want to prove.
I’m not necessarily against the Times Square Plaza. It probably is a good idea due to the number of pedestrians in the area, but I would like to see fair statistics.
Why is it wrong to subsidize car travel, if in fact it is subsidized? Are you also calling for unsubsidized mass transit? Why is one okay but not the other?
It is a known fact that the police have been encouraging people not to report crimes that they believe they will not be able to solve, skewing the statistics in favor of certain crimes being reduced. As far as education, you can talk to a number of experts who will substantiate what I am saying about those statistics also being skewed for example by lowering standards and making tests easier to show more favorable results. Also teaching to the test instead of teaching so kids actually learn more.
Bicycle lanes have increased congestion along Prospect Park West, but you would just call that “traffic calming.” Traffic could have been calmed just as easy by changing the signal timing from getting green lights by going 35 mph (which was above the speed limit anyway) to 25 mph without reducing any lanes.
I’m not against bikes, but they already have a lane inside the park which easily could have been converted to two ways. You don’t need a second one only a block away.
There used to be three lanes of traffic inside the park, three lanes on PPW and one lane along Flatbush Avenue. That’s a total of 7 lanes. The total now is 5 during rush hours, not counting double parking which may reduce it to 4. Now they are considering a full-time ban on park traffic reducing capacity further to two or 3 lanes, total — one on Flatbush and 1 or 2 on PPW. How anyone can think that a reduction in capacity from 7 lanes to 2 or 3 will not cause severe congestion and shift more traffic to the already congested BQE is beyond me.
What do you mean, if it’s in fact subsidized? Highways are subsidized to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year before you even start tallying costs of pollution, “free” parking, policing, deaths, and all the little local roads that probably don’t get highway tax money. The only direct usage charges drivers are expected to pay are gas taxes and tolls. Gas taxes under-perform, and tolls aren’t that common.
I don’t really care too much if transit is subsidized or not. Transit dependency is less harmful than mass automobile dependency. I’m fine with the idea of transit paying for itself, and it comes pretty close anyway.
What I don’t get is why you’re so bothered by every lane closure. Speaking of evidence, I’ve seen no evidence of a negative impact from any of them, and there’s undeniable evidence of a drop in fatalities. I guess a few people would be “harmed” by a longer trip around the parks, but…it’s a park! Why the hell does every inch of space that could in theory be dedicated to auto traffic need to be dedicated to auto traffic? Just pointing that out leads to screams of you just hate cars from the likes of the PPW opposition.
As far as what lane closures have happened, I don’t mean you personally, but it really almost just seems to come down to a bunch of entitled Protestant types who see people suddenly enjoying themselves and think it’s a sin or something. Opposition thus far has been completely irrational.
It costs a lot more than just gas taxes and tolls to drive a car, and those aren’t the only direct costs. When you drive in addition to gas taxes and tolls, you pay for the gas, insurance, registration, inspection, maintenance and repairs, City auto use tax, parking meters, parking tickets sometimes even if you are innocent, new license plates, and of course for the car itself. Point — It ain’t cheap to drive and most people who do have to. Now you want us to pay for parking anywhere on the street also even if we park in our own garage or driveway overnight.
Don’t understand why you don’t care if mass transit is subsidized or not because higher fares mean more cars on the road.
You don’t see negative impacts from lane closures because you don’t drive. I haven’t been on PPW or 65th Street in Brooklyn since lanes were removed, but I know when there were two lanes in each direction on 65th Street, it provided a great alternative to the Belt Parkway during rush hours. Because of traffic light synchronization in the peak direction, you could get from Fort Hamilton Parkway to McDonald in only ten minutes with only red light at most. I’ve heard that since they put in the bike lane and removed a traffic lane, the same trip now takes 15 minutes longer.
It’s not that the trip is longer around the parks, the distance doesn’t make a difference, it’s the time expended that is longer if the roads are more congested.
You sound like the cars are using the parks 24 hours a day when in fact they have been closed to cars for 20 hours a day for years. We are only talking about the rush hours and now you want to ban that also. It really makes a lot of sense when it is raining or freezing outside and there isn’t a soul in the parks but the cars can’t use the roadways anyway. I can see banning cars when the weather is nice, but not during inclement weather. That just makes no sense.
As far as the opposition thus far being irrational, I’ll hold off on commenting until I personally see what is going on.
I’m going to ask this again because outside of this comment, no opponent has adequately answered it: Why should the city give away street space for free? The answer can’t just be “because there are other fees for parking.” I pay rent; my parents pay property taxes; we’d all rather not. Think of it as rent for your car because it too is taking up space.
BrooklynBus: apologies for this, but I answered you at the bottom to make more thread space.
To Ben:
Another reason why we should continue to give away public space for free is that you are unfairly targeting a specific population who already are paying high costs.
Using you argument, one could also argue that the City should charge for use of its public beaches, playgrounds, or libraries. Historically these have always been free as residential parking space on public streets has been, so you are not talking about a unique situation where government gives something away for free.
Public libraries are a service to ensure the working class can read. Free parking is a service to the entitled upper middle class. Not the same thing.
I didn’t realize that you have to be “upper middle class” to be able to own a car. I also didn’t realize that public libraries offer free literacy lessons teaching people how to read. Than you for educating me.
You don’t have do be upper middle class to own a car, but the fact is that car owners are, in fact, wealthier than car nonowners. Free parking is a giveaway of valuable public real estate to car owners.
It’s tough to be literate without something to read. Public libraries provide books to anyone who would like to read, rich or poor alike.
Andrew,
So what if automobile owners are wealthier than non-car owners, that still doesn’t give you the right to charge them for what the are already paying for with the auto use tax which is a surcharge for using the city streets which includes parking on residential streets. If you want to charge wealthier people more, then let’s go back to a graduated income tax and tax everyone just not one particular group.
Also, people would still have something to read if you had to pay to use a public library. Would a nickel deposited into a turnstile for everyone entering a public library be so horrible? Poor people certainly could afford that and think of all the money that could be raised. The City shouldn’t be giving anything away for free, should they?
I could advocate a dumb idea just as well as you could.
Again, I have no idea what this supposed “auto use tax” is. How many thousands of dollars is it per year? (And why doesn’t it vary by where in the city your car is parked? Real estate values vary widely across the city.)
I am certainly not trying to sock it to the rich – if I were, as you point out, there are better ways to accomplish that. I’m simply clarifying that charging appropriate rents for car storage spaces wouldn’t disproportionately hurt the poor, as many assume.
Other people are not harmed if I choose to read a book. (On the contrary, having literate and well educated neighbors is an asset.) Other people are harmed if I choose to drive a car – the people driving or riding on the bus or awaiting the delivery from the truck behind me, the people living nearby who have to inhale my car’s emissions, the people who have other ideas of how to use the space my car occupies, and, if I make a tragic mistake, perhaps even the people I hit. You’re entitled to disagree, but I think there’s a pretty strong reason to subsidize public libraries. I don’t see why we should be subsidizing something with as many negative externalities as driving. If I want to drive, I’ll pay for it myself.
Andrew,
I already explained the auto use tax up above. It doesn’t vary according to where your car is parked like real estate taxes because you do not own the public space where you park your car. Your comparison to rent or owning a house is ridiculous.
I’m not going to repeat myself. Go up about ten posts and you will see it.
How do you make a car that’s less likely to kill a pedestrian? (Which auto manufacturer even cares?)
The usual safety improvements to cars are to the people inside the car. That isn’t what most NYC residents are concerned with.
Of course people are concerned with people inside the car. Question: Which bus manufacturer is trying to make a bus that is less likely to kill a pedestrian or truck manufacturer also? So why are you picking on auto manufacturers?
I’ve always been a mass transit person. (I’m not calling myself BrooklynCar or BrooklynDrives.) I never though when I was younger that I would be spending so much time defending the rights of car drivers.
Making a car “safer” does nothing to protect people not inside cars.
In 2009, 155 pedestrians were killed in car crashes in NYC. I think we can do better than that. Making cars “safer” won’t make a dent.
I’m not picking on auto manufacturers. I’m not suggesting that cars magically do less damage to the people they hit. I’m suggesting that we stop going out of our way encouraging people to own and use cars, and that we try to find ways to make sure that people who are using cars are using them in ways that are less likely to injure or kill pedestrians.
Can’t argue with much of what you just said except that keeping residential street parking free is not “going out our way to encourage people to own and use cars.” Putting a charge on it is going out of our way to hurt one particular group while doing nothing about increasing their alternatives to make it easier to use mass transit.
And exactly how does a charge for residential parking make cars less likely to injure or kill pedestrians? Because you believe an extra charge will result in fewer cars on the street? Maybe so, because for some it will be the last straw and they will move out of the City. Who needs their tax revenue anyway, right?
So it’s natural for space to be given away for free? Aside from cars, what else do we allow people to store for free on land that doesn’t belong to them?
I’m making a broader point: that we stop treating what’s best for the motorist as sacrosanct. The easier we make it for people to drive and park, the more they will drive and the more they will park – and the more space will be unavailable for other functions that may in many cases be more worthwhile.
Charging for parking, specifically, will help people who need to drive (by making it easier for them to find parking) and will help people who don’t have cars (by no longer requiring them to give up their public land for free). People who don’t need their cars quite so badly will have an incentive to get rid of them (or merely to shift from a two-car household to a one-car household). And more people will be inclined to ride transit instead of driving, which in turn will allow for better transit service. Seems like a pretty good deal to me for almost everyone.
But, hey, if you want to leave the city because you can’t bear the thought of not having your parking subsidized, good riddance.
You are just repeating yourself over and over again and not advancing your argument any.
There are just so many holes in it. First, if you are going to charge someone for parking on a residential street like you are proposing, you better guarantee that there will be a space for him which you won’t be able to do. Would you like a theater to charge you for a seat and when you go inside, you find that all the seats are taken and you have to stand?
“The easier we make it for people to drive and park, the more they will drive and the more they will park – and the more space will be unavailable for other functions that may in many cases be more worthwhile.”
So you are saying that adding one parking space, because that will save them one second looking for a space, will cause more people to drive. Very logical.
And exactly what other more worthwhile functions are you talking about? Do you intend to replace all parking spaces with pop-up cafes, widened sidewalks, bicycle parking, street vendors, etc. Every street needs one of those. I would just love a pop-up cafe in front of my house, and we really need a wider sidewalk for my dead-end street, and who wouldn’t want to park their bicycle in the middle of nowhere? A street vendor would do just a fantastic business where there is virtually no pedestrian traffic. You are the one with all the statistics, so tell me what percentage of streets where there is currently free parking has a potential for another purpose, more worthwhile use than parking one’s car.
And how will charging for residential parking make it easier to find parking and how will it work with different rates in different neighborhoods as you propose?
When I have to go to Brooklyn Heights I pay $5 to park or do I have to live there to get a permit there? Well I also go to Canarsie. There I only pay $1. and does Midwood cost me $2? Sounds to me that driving around looking for a meter would be cheaper so I will just do that but now it takes me twice as long to find a meter because more people want them. Yeah, I’m really finding it easier to park.
What did you say? I don’t pay each time I park, I just buy a monthly or yearly pass for a neighborhood I may only visit twice a year? Let’s see during that course of time I must go to 50 neighborhoods. Guess I need to buy 50 different permits. What, I only need one permit but I have to know in advance which neighborhoods I will be visiting so I know how much to pay? Or does the City somehow keep track of my license plate and just sends me a bill once a year for all the neighborhoods I’ve visited and figures out the charges. What if I don’t agree? Can I dispute them?
Have you even thought this thing through?
When I have to go to Brooklyn Heights I pay $5 to park or do I have to live there to get a permit there?
Have you ever left New York? In other cities — Boston, Philadelphia, DC — with residential permit programs, you get a few hours to park without incurring penalties if you don’t have a permit for that area. It would work the same in NYC.
This isn’t a novel idea. It’s in use, successfully, throughout the country. Check out some other cities beyond your faux-suburban deep Southern Brooklyn enclave. It will help you understand where the rest of us are drawing some very good ideas.
Very good ideas? That’s debatable. Most people on Sheepsheadbites.com don’t seem to think so.
And who said it would work in NY the way it works in Boston, Philadelphia and other cities? Every time this idea is proposed in NYC, it’s always from communities like Brooklyn Heights who want the permits only for themselves to keep commuters from parking on “their” streets which I pay taxes for.
Under your scenario, if a permit can be used anywhere, the commuters will still park there and how will that free up spaces?
I think this is fair criticism of this website, and the type of content that is generally featured on this subject, however…
I think the problem identified in Brooklyn is understated… there are thousands and thousands of people living, and working in and around Brooklyn, that are long term residents… who refuse to register their vehicles in the state of NY… This cheats the state of NY, and in my mind it’s insurance fraud, because i guarantee you that many of these people have their cars listed as being somewhere else on their insurance in order to save money. I think this ultimately hurts the average NYC vehicle owner who is doing things by the book, and that should piss people off more than it seems to.
In California if you’ve been in the state for 30 days or more you are required to register your car. And yes you will be ticketed. And yes CHP (California Highway Patrol) will cruise college campuses looking for out of state tags.
And look folks, driver’s do not cover the cost of the streets or their commute. Car ownership is WAY underpriced. It’s not a right to own a car. We give away an obscene amount tax giveaways not to mention environmental and healthcare costs to drivers, it’s time to recoup those costs.
But let’s not fall into the trap that DC has with residential parking permits, where it’s only something like $15 a year. A DC blogger I know calculated the value of those on street spaces is somewhere north of $1000. Residential parking permits should be high. Maybe calculated by (in our case) distance from transit.
In Japan they have no on street parking, and to even register your car you have to have proof that you have place to park it. (That’s why they have kei cars … super tiny cars that will fit into small parking spaces carved out of buildings.)
Car ownership may not be a right, but its still a necessity for many. Not everyone who lives near transit commutes to Manhattan where there’s plenty of transit options. There are those who need to go from one outer borough to another or to the suburbs to work. Some of these people might even be working class with low income. What are their alternatives?
Yeah, a few drivers might be working class or low income. In NYC, most aren’t. Regardless, society is hardly doing them any favors by inflicting auto dependency on them.
Refusing to invest in better transit is just guaranteeing they’ll be taking slow, belching buses to work.
I really doubt that most drivers in NYC are not “working class” as you call them. Maybe if you only include Manhattan you can make that case but not NYC as whole.
Perhaps most “professional drivers” are working class. Wouldn’t surprise me at all, but they’re driving in the employ of someone else. The contention that the working class in outer boroughs is made up of a tremendous population of car commuters is a bit absurd given the prohibitive costs of car ownership, even in the outer boroughs – and it seems Matt was talking about commuting.
Nope, not talking about professional drivers. I am talking about car owners. I am not sure where you live but you should probably go up to the Bronx sometime and tell me that there are not many car owners up there.
Why go up there? A simple Google search suggests that around ~60% of Bronx households are car-free, presumably most of that weighted towards the poorer side of the borough. That 40% of them include drivers isn’t a big deal to me, but I don’t see why everyone else should be paying for their driving too.
As Ben would say, a strawman arguement. From your own statements, you don’t like trustfund/suburbanite assholes (very adult btw) who drive cars. It has nothing to do with all those poor folks in the Bronx, many who live in subsidized housing, get subsidized medical care, receive half-fare MetroCards or who just walk right on the bus without paying altogether. Why are you not concerned with all this subsidization? Because you hate people who work for a living, make some decent money, and (horror of horrors!) own a car! OMG, what eco-terrorists! The scourge of the earth! Selective outrage is wonderful as it let’s you pick the people you don’t like and then rail against them on a silly-ass blog. I’ll think of you next time I fork over $6 to cross a lousy bridge.
Heh, this is quantitative illiteracy at its finest. Data is now a logical fallacy!
No, I don’t like assholes who drive cars, just as I don’t like assholes who walk on the street. I just don’t like assholes very much. Yeah, yeah, some poor people are subsidized too. That clearly bothers you, but find a place where I say they aren’t, or where I say I’m not concerned with it. However, pretending you’re paying the full costs of your driving by paying $6 to cross a “lousy bridge” is disingenuous. You’re not, and your sense of entitlement to a free ride while complaining about other people’s entitlements is silly.
This just isn’t about you. It’s about everyone. The attendant costs of driving affect everyone, and everyone deserves safe streets and clean air. BTW, since you don’t know what a straw man is, here’s a textbook example:
Oh, and the point about poor people being subsidized probably qualifies as a red herring. Now can we put our undergrad logic class dicks away?
Hard data shows that vehicle-owning households throughout the region are wealthier than households without access to a vehicle. These trends hold true not only in Manhattan but in the outer boroughs, in New Jersey, on Long Island, and in Rockland, Westchester, and Putnam counties:
http://www.tstc.org/reports/cpfactsheets.php
Placing the “working class” car driving card doesn’t quite fly on a macro level (at least compared to transit users).
Here in Westchester transit riders make under 35K per year on average while car owners make about 70K last I read. I’m subsidising most car commuters including my girlfriend since I ride the bus each day.
I don’t want to here how over taxed the poor car drivers are anymore, I’m sick of it! Change your habbits if it is such a hassle for you.
How is riding the bus subsidizing the car commuter? Aren’t the car commuters subsidizing the bus riders by paying tolls over the MTA bridges?
They are doing car drivers a favor by removing themselves from the road, but you’re right: The fare from the bus isn’t being used to pay for street repairs or anything like that.
You’re underestimating how big the congestion reduction effect is. The total reduction in the cost of congestion in Greater New York coming from mass transit, according to the TTI, is about the same as the total operating plus capital loss of the region’s transit agencies. On the whole, the subsidy to transit riders is really a payment by drivers to transit riders for reduced congestion.
You make a point that society isn’t doing them any favors by causing them to be dependant on cars for transportation. However, by giving them free parking, we aren’t making them auto-dependant. The fact that we haven’t invested in better transit (and transit to a wider range of places) has caused that.
Even if we took the money from them and applied it to transit-expansion projects, it would still be a while before they could be completed, and in the meantime, they would still be dependant on their cars to have a reasonable form of transportation.
As far as low-income workers using cars, there is a correlation between income and transit use, but as housing prices in transit-rich areas of the city get higher and higher, the poor are being forced further out, to areas with less transit service.
For example, if you look at the commute mode for parts of the central Bronx, you’ll see that some areas have 30-40% of the workers commuting by cars. By comparison, many wealthy parts of the Manhattan have that number at closer to 10%. Even in Manhattan, poorer areas near the FDR Drive (parts of the Alphabet City and East Harlem) have poor transit access, and have 20-25% of workers commuting by car.
Look, let’s drop this line of crap about taking money from drivers. The most drivers can do until they’re paying 100% of the costs of their own driving is contribute more of the costs of their own driving. When drivers are paying 100% of the costs of their driving, we can start discussing unfair “taking.” Until then, it’s a non-starter argument — we’re only taking from others to support drivers. Free parking certainly encourages auto dependency, but it is not the only “free” drivers get.
I don’t really see what your point is about how there are some “poor” drivers. Your point that
sounds like evidence we need better transit in some far-flung points in the city. I believe I’ve even pissed transit advocates here off by saying that would make more sense than the SAS. More cars in those places is just going to make their commutes more congested. Doesn’t help much, if at all.
Your next point
pretty much describes the kind of selective subsidization ferryboi was complaining about/enjoying himself, except applied to drivers from housing projects.
Regardless, we’d probably be spending less on them if we provided them effective transit access so they wouldn’t need cars.
But we’re not providing them effective transit access. Hence, we are forcing them to use their cars.
Now, if we provided a bunch of transit lines going in all directions to these low-income neighborhoods (east-west in addition to north-south), that would be a different story. Then, there would be no real reason for these people to drive.
The people in the Bronx who drive to work are rarely low-income. They’re usually middle-class people living in middle- or low-income areas. Not everyone who lives in the South Bronx is poor.
Or they reverse commute. I know a fella who reverse commutes to work in the suburbs.
From the Bx north and then across the Tappan Zee.
Let me tell you how it will be;
There’s one for you, nineteen for me.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
(if you drive a car, car;) – I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) – I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) – I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) – I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman!
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister heath)
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
And you’re working for no one but me.
Taxman!
Although I now no longer live in NYC, the funny thing is that I was under this impression that NYC insurance was more expensive for the longest time, so I kept my car registered in another state. Then finally, I bit the bullet and switched states (and providers, to GEICO) and found that my monthly charge went from $100/month to $50/month. Go figure.
Okay wow, this sounds like a GEICO commercial…
You are so correct and this is something the City never addresses just like flagrant misuse and abundance of police parking placards and misuse of handicapped parking permits. Why should police firemen and judges be guaranteed a free and sometimes illegal parking space and be exempt from having to use mass transit? The rest of the drivers have to subsidize these freeloaders by paying higher rates.
I don’t think you’ll find many people here disagreeing with you on that point, but it’s proven to be a very tough nut to crack. How do you convince a cop to ticket a cop?
It’s been a tough nut to crack because there never has been a real attempt to crack it. Politicians, judges, cops, etc consider themselves above the rest of us, like they are some special class. Police Officers believe that every officer has the right to drive to work. That was originally the rationale to let them ride the subways for free. It was believed that since they are always on duty technically, it would be safer for the public if they rode the train to work instead of drove. Doesn’t matter if it’s free, they still won’t do it and insist on driving.
Meter maids are not cops, but they won’t ticket one either. I remember a few years ago when one tried, and she was reprimanded and reassigned just for trying to enforce the law. So I don’t have an answer for you on that one. The only time a cop will ticket a cop is if he has a beef with the department and wants to get back at it. But it is something that needs to be addressed.
I agree that it’s a serious problem. I don’t have a realistic solution – if you do, I’m all ears.
I already said that I don’t. It would be up to the elected officials to do something and I strongly doubt that they will.
Part of the solution is separating functions out. Uniform police officers should be NYPD. Detectives should be in a separate, competing investigative department (NY Department of Detection?) with different and narrower arresting powers but more investigative powers. Likewise, meter maids and whoever is doing ticketing should probably be in revenue or finance or transportation – not a policing agency. Each department should have different department-wide missions, with different goals and benchmarks that set them somewhat against each other – but not so much they can’t work together.
It’s not always good to encourage a bureaucratic tribe mentality, and doing it with police can lead to the problems with have today with arbitrary unaccountable police beatings, ticketing blitzes, and just plain sour treatment.
I do not know enough about policing to know if what you are suggesting makes sense or not, but I agree that meter maids have no reason being part of the Police Department. They are there for one reason only. When they were part of DOT, they were constantly being assaulted by irate motorists and it was thought that making them part of the NYPD would lead to getting them some respect.
I do not know how that is working out, but I will tell you that they weren’t being assaulted for no reason. When someone stops for a moment in a bus stop and you block him in preventing him from leaving so you can write ticket, or if you choose to write a ticket for an expired meter before it actually has expired, or you start writing a parking ticket before the person has even come to a stop (all of which I have personally seen or heard about), you are just asking for trouble.
Last year I parked my car two minutes before the alternate side of the street regulation went into affect. As I was walking away I noticed a meter maid, so I walked back to the car for the two minutes. About ten minutes later we both entered the same establishment and she asked me if I went back to the car because I thought she was going to give me a ticket. I said yes, and she said that she would never give someone a ticket for one or two minutes. We then got to talking and she told be that in her 30 years on the job, she never was assaulted even once. I told her that was because she was doing her job well.
So the answer to getting respect is giving respect. If the City took that attitude instead of trying to milk everyone out of their last dime. meter maids wouldn’t have to be part of the police force.
Yeah, I guess. I can’t really see why a friendly, “Hey, you can’t do that,” isn’t enough in most cases. The boner people have for punishment is probably explained by decades of authoritarian/entitled moral majority types, neo-cons, and now teabaggers in power as role models. That has likely created huge numbers of people who just think they can exercise power for power’s sake. That attitude is fostered starting in daycare and schools as arbitrary rules get enforced without regard for situational needs or positive values like mercy, fairness, or even empathy. It’s really no surprise that cops, particularly younger male cops, sometimes act like pigs, when you consider they’re given power without a lot of training in how to exercise it. The city/NYPD leadership has embraced arbitrary tactics too. Combine that with poor education and lack of oversight — who watches the watchers? — and things don’t get better. What’s frightening is police agencies don’t even have to follow their own rules anymore, or at least there won’t be any meaningful consequences if they don’t. Judges right up to Scalia are deferential, prosecutors are deferential, unions protect their own, civilian review boards are toothless, politicians see crime dropping, and the blue wall probably only stops at murder.
Still, I rather doubt most assaults by drivers happen because of anything a ticketing agent did wrong. Most assaults probably just happen because driving, at some level, also fosters a sense of entitlement.
“Still, I rather doubt most assaults by drivers happen because of anything a ticketing agent did wrong. Most assaults probably just happen because driving, at some level, also fosters a sense of entitlement.”
You may be correct. It may be just a general build up of frustration against bureaucracy which makes people feel helpless when they call 311 for example and see their problems ignored and Bloomberg keep telling people that is the number to call. (No slight meant against 311 operators.) Or they continually complain to the MTA and are also ignored. I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that they are drivers and feel any sense of entitlement.
I know I’d be pissed off if I had to drive all day, stuck in traffic, and then got a ticketed after I, in a state of exasperation, finally decided to park illegally. I’d probably want to rip the ticketing agent’s head off.
I actually took a psych test recently that suggested it’s safer for the public if I don’t drive! :-p
If you knowingly park illegally, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get a ticket. The problem is that it’s just too easy to get one — misleading, missing or confusing parking signs, tickets given out erroneously or intentionally to fill a quota although the agent knows that a ticket was not deserved, forgetting to get your car inspected although you don’t get a reminder every year like you used to, being unavoidably delayed at a parking meter through no fault of your own and finding a ticket on your car when the meter expired one minute before. When I was a kid, your chance of being ticketed at an expired meter within 30 minutes was about 30%. Now it is about 95% if you re 5 minutes late, and $60 for being a minute late is just ridiculous.
And your chance of getting it dismissed is also much less. Half the judges are reasonable, but the other half have you marked guilty no matter what proof you may have because their reappointment depends on how much revenue they bring in. Really encourages justice doesn’t it? And you have to be willing to lose a day’s pay to fight it in most cases. Many innocent people just pay without protesting because they don’t have the time to bother with it. And what about them threatening you that if you don’t agree to pay half (even if you are innocent), before a hearing to settle everything, you will have to pay the entire amount if the judge finds you guilty even if there are extenuating circumstances. Something about that just doesn’t sit right with me.
I think NYPD should be impounding cars left and right in Brooklyn. It’s become such a trendy place to be, but no one wants to pay the costs associated with it.
I agree with you on the cost of ownership and use, but before we go to hard on drivers, lets not forget that its true of mass transit as well… as a commuter on NJT and PATH, I’d be fascinated to see the real cost of what my commute should be, the rail line i take has only 35% of it’s operating costs paid for by actual ticket sales.
You can probably get a sense of the true costs here. But keep in mind, a lot of those costs aren’t strictly for the mass transit itself, but the inefficiencies stemming from work rules, unneeded overhead, etc.. For what we’re paying in fares these days, we could probably get pretty close to 100% operating expense recovery from the farebox, at least on railroads.
Though I dunno, PATH could be a different animal entirely.
I definitely agree with your first point, especially in Williamsburg/Bushwick. The influx of entitled, trust-fund assholes who have stupid jobs that pay the bare minimum, but are able to somehow afford themselves their own cars (registered in New Jersey or Connecticut, of course), are running the streets amok. I wish these cars would all get ticketed and impounded, and the people who own them wouldn’t be able to retrieve them until they remove the bogus plates and register them in New York. My room mate is a perfect example of this. She works all over the tri-state area, so I understand the fact that she needs a car. However, she lives in New York City. She should be paying for the luxury of parking her stupid car for free right in front of her apartment. Furthermore, if I had things my way, she would be paying an added tax for using the damn thing when driving within the five boroughs, because there’s absolutely no reason for it. We live a block away from the train.
s/entitled, trust-fund assholes/suburbanites
But does the train take her every place she needs to go and how much longer would it take her by train than by car?
I live a block from the Montrose L. She drives to the Brooklyn Bowl. And to the West Village sometimes.
Don’t know where the Brooklyn Bowl is, but she shouldn’t be driving to the West Village unless it’s like 2 in the morning.
The Brooklyn Bowl is in Williamsburg. I believe it is on Wythe Avenue.
But driving to the Brooklyn Bowl is understandable considering she has the car already. If she were considering buying a car just to travel to the West Village and Brooklyn Bowl, that would be plain stupid.
Does it matter? You don’t need to own a car so that you can once in a while go somewhere that’s hard to get to by transit.
Did you read what John wrote? He said that she did need a car because she works all over the tri-state area. He wasn’t talking about the need to go somewhere occasionally that’s hard to get to by mass transit. He was objecting to her using it within the City.
And what are you referring to by saying “Does it matter?” Of course it matters if it takes 60 or 90 minutes to go somewhere by mass transit and only 10 minutes by car.
Have you ever heard of a car rental?
What are you not getting? He said she works all over the Tri-state area. I’m assuming that means 5 days a week. Are you suggesting she rent a car every day?
Stuff like that is where a good car-share program can come in handy.
I like the idea of care share programs, but I don’t see how it applies in this particular case. It’s not that she needs one like two days a week or once a month.
She drives to work, and somebody else uses the car for what they need to do over the course of the day. It may not always work, particularly to trips to suburbs, but it can relieve the parking problem somewhat. A parked car is one not being put to use, afterall.
Bolwerk,
That assumes she parks her car on the street while at work. Sounds nice in theory, but I wonder how it would actually work out. Sounds like it requires a lot of cooperation between two parties. What if someone is late due to unforeseen circumstances and can’t get the car back on time for the first person to retrieve?
Like I said, it’s not perfect. Although…
It sounds like a lot of the downsides of such a program could be mitigated by modern mobile apps and stuff. Somebody need not necessarily schedule the use of the vehicle, and use could be JIT priced according to time of day, current demand, current and congestion — which could even result in someone getting the vehicle for less-than-cost during the day, thereby being rewarded for getting it away from an area with limited parking.
Sounds like something for an operations expert, IT manager, and transport planner to work out with a transport economist. But it’s not an inherently bad idea.
No one said it was inherently bad.
Drivers already pay all sorts of taxes, tolls (which are a tax indeed because it is government levy) gas tax on the gasoline their cars consume, registration fees just to rattle off a few. I know there are more. The sales tax for the purchase or lease price. The sales tax when the car receives service. There is no sales tax when you buy a subway ride. I wonder if anyone can add to this list.
We are already nickel and dimed to death. Instead, clean up the filth that is Albany and focus on the spend side of government instead of the revenue side. There is plenty of revenue.
They pay all sorts of taxes and tolls, and yet are still subsidized by the city, state, and federal governments. Thats how expensive automobiles actually are. Whether owners are already “paying a lot” or not, if they are still being massively subsidized (more than transit still, even though most people in NYC do not drive), they arent paying enough.
You can try telling your landlord “I already pay so much for rent and bills!” and try paying him 80% of your rent, but you might find that argument doesnt hold any weight.
Just because what you pay in car taxes has many different names doesn’t mean it’s enough to cover the costs of roads.
Cars aren’t the only ones who use the roads. Most wear and tear on the roads are caused by heavier trucks and buses not cars. They are also used by a wide variety of government and emergency vehicles. Don’t make it seem like car owners should pay for the entire upkeep of the roads.
You’re right that trucks and buses cause vastly more damage than cars. But still, if the parkways covered their own costs, you’d have a case; in reality, they don’t – Texas DOT crunched the numbers, and not a single highway in Texas, not even those that ban commercial vehicles, covers much more than half its construction and upkeep costs.
Emergency vehicles are not the issue. In an urban street network such as New York’s, the best policy for emergency access is to limit car and truck traffic, in order to make emergency traffic faster. Standard practice around the world is to let emergency vehicles use bus lanes and transit malls.
Again, why should roads have to cover their costs when virtually all mass transit does not cover their costs?
Because making the decision to drive comes with attendant externalities that don’t accompany use of mass transit? That’s not a good enough reason?
How about the fact that the roads are really congested, and maybe it would be better to prioritize more important traffic? And if that’s not a good enough reason?
How about that we don’t have a lot of extra space lying around for transport, we need to free up some resources to start paying for capital improvements, and POV users make the lowest contribution to their own costs of just about any transport mode.
Or, we could apply ferryboi’s self-interest to the question, and just finally admit that mass transit users subsidize drivers more than the other way around. They just do it with income taxes, rather than toll payments.
What you are not considering is that mass transit does not and cannot work well all over. It only works when there is a large number of people at one origin who need to go to a destination that also attracts a large number of people.
Most of the auto trips do not fit that category: they are too diverse, and hence the car becomes a necessity for those types of trips. I don’t see you asking for more park and ride lots all over to encourage mass transit.
Where I live a ten minute car trip can take 60 or 90 minutes by bus and the roads are usually not congested during non-rush hours when I make the trip so sure I am being selfish by not wanting to waste two hours every day riding mass transit when I don’t have to. Until you can provide me with a feasible alternative, I will continue to drive.
As far as using the argument that everyone’s income taxes go to support roads that serve everyone, (Without them your supermarket couldn’t get deliveries.) you don’t her me complaining of all my income taxes that have gone to our education system for the past 40 years when I do not have any children. So quick picking on those who drive like they are some evil monsters who need to be punished.
Park and rides do not encourage mass transit. They encourage driving to commuter rail in a very narrow set of circumstances, namely when the destination is very congested. Best industry practice, which as usual is not found in the US, is to make sure people can walk or bike to transit.
Of course park and rides encourage mass transit unless the charge for them is so much that together with the transit fare, it isn’t economical anymore. We could use some park and rides at major subway stations which we don’t have. Buses are just too unreliable or don’t operate often enough to attract much usage in many cases. In my neighborhood, one bus line was recently eliminated so people now have to rely on car services or a relative to pick them up and drop them off.
Not everyone can ride a bike to transit and some wouldn’t because they perceive it as too dangerous. It is also limited by the weather. Most people do not want to ride a bike in the rain snow or cold. (That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be made easier to do so by providing more places to store bikes.)
And how do you propose to make it easier for people to walk to transit? Build higher rise developments near major transit hubs? Wait they’ve already done that. Weren’t you the one who advocated spacing bus stops every quarter mile to increase the walk to the bus stop?
I like how your solution to the loss of bus lines isn’t restoring the bus lines but building more parking.
To JB:
The problem is getting people to use mass transit. If building park and ride lots will do that, yes I would be for that.
What is your solution to restoring bus lines? Charge people to park their car? Do you really think that revenue raised in that manner would ever go toward subsidizing bus operating expenses? You are living in a dream world. The City would just use that money as it sees fit and would never turn it over to the MTA.
In suburban Tokyo, people don’t seem to mind riding their bicycle to the train station. In Germany they do things differently, making sure the commuter rail stops are located and spaced in such a way that people can walk to them. There’s a wealth of information out there about how to make transit better that your average disgruntled New Yorker may not be familiar with.
@BrooklynBus, I’m not talking out charging for parking now. What I’m saying is if we’re faced with a choice of spending government money to build more subsidized parking lots or restore and improve bus lines, I would choose the bus lines. If it makes you feel any better I do think making mass transit more efficient and lowering its need for subsidies is an important issue that’s ignored by many transit advocates.
So use your car. Nobody is telling you not to use your car.
We’re just wondering why we should be paying for the space it occupies.
Yeah, just keep repeating the same thing over and over again. You are not paying for the space it occupies.
He’s not. Everybody is — unless you’re just leaving it in your garage 24/7.
Bolwerk – Okay, explain to me how I am paying for a parking spot that your car is occupying in front of your house if you had a car. Because that space could be generating money for the City because it could be turned into a pop-up cafe or the space could be leased to a street vendor?
If you’re a city taxpayer, in that scenario you’re undeniably paying for me indirectly as long as I’m not paying 100% of the costs of my own driving (my share of road usage, parking costs, etc.). I don’t think this can really be disputed, and I think that’s what most people who talk about subsidies are getting at. In economic and I guess accounting terms, driving has some combination of attributable fixed and variable costs. It doesn’t take a lot of effort going through government data to show these aren’t covered.
The other thing you mention, about cafes, is opportunity cost — which I don’t think most people here are considering, though I think that’s what Andrew was talking about (I don’t want to speak for him). Yes, in taking space with another possible use and using it for parking, the opportunity cost is the other activity and whatever revenue that activity would generate (of course, it’s not hard to beat curbside parking, so this can be big <g>). I would guess this can be really $big$ in busy places, economically (but not necessarily socially) meaningless in others. So unless we’re talking about commercial strips, particularly mixed use ones, mainly the total cost in the first paragraph is in play. Less obvious, room to lounge around and whatever is also a form of opportunity cost. Times Square lost parking and gained lawn chairs — no direct revenue was in play.
However, all that ignores indirect costs of driving. It’s hard to put a dollar amount on air quality. If you want to go into it, at some level, you’re paying for the smog, climate change, and healthcare costs that are the result of current policy. This stuff is all really hard to quantify.
I never said it worked well all over. Though I don’t see why that means we should be wasting more and more money every year trying to keep afloat a system of POV-centricity that is clearly expensive. Cars have a place, it’s just that the place isn’t every square inch of the country.
I more or less agree with Alon about P&R. I’ll also add, you don’t find me proposing building rail lines out to the boonies either — it’s not as bad as more highways to the boonies, but it’s not exactly good either.
I’m totally for using the best tool for the best job. And, I don’t object to your driving. Especially you, since I believe you’ve mentioned having a physical disability? I wouldn’t object to the city/state/feds (whatever) helping you pay for your car transportation under those circumstances. That doesn’t mean I think the car trips of every able-bodied person in your shoes should be subsidized – particularly ones where transit really is a feasible, if not better, alternative.
Your argument about supermarkets doesn’t make sense. Supermarkets see their costs increased because of congestion (think about it: more fuel wasted, plus a delivery company that has to pay a driver and perhaps a porter to sit in traffic). I never said anything about punishing people. If anyone is being punished, it’s transit users who are punished because of disinvestment in transit — and perhaps the people buying basic necessities who have their costs driven up by the driving entitlement.
“Cars have a place, it’s just that the place isn’t every square inch of the country.”
Correct, and they are not in every square inch of the country. What’s the figure? Something like 85% of the people on the Upper East Side use mass transit to get to work and automobile usage for those residents is extremely low. I’m not sure how many own cars but most of them sit in a garage 90% of the time and are used only on weekends. Most traffic there are cabs, buses, and trucks, not private cars.
Cars are mostly used where they are necessary and when it makes the most sense. Of course you have the few who will insist on driving anywhere for no good reason other than they wish not to associate with the common folk riding the trains and buses, but that is the minority of people. With costs so high to do anything in this City, nothing is being given away for free.
Of course congestion increases costs for everyone, which is why most sane people are against it. But what don’t you understand about my supermarket example? I was just responding to a comment that taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing roads and drivers should pay their entire costs. I asked why, since not only drivers benefit from the roads. Mass transit users are subsidized in part so why should the automobile drivers have to subsidize others who use the roads like businesses such as supermarkets which everyone needs and benefits from even those who do not drive.
I don’t remember the exact figure for Manhattan, but I think something like 70% of people don’t own cars. That doesn’t say much about whether they have licenses, use the cars they have, use someone else’s car, or drive casually when they go out of town. It’s kind of hard to predict Manhattanite behavior by analogy since no other place, even in NYC, resembles it demographically.
Well, I can buy that supermarkets benefit from subsidized roads and buyers benefit by the savings passed onto them. However, a subsidized road is not the same as subsidized road use. People buying items at supermarkets are paying more because of subsidized POV use, not less. Deliveries throughout the region are more expensive thanks to the unpredictable nature of traffic and the attendant wasted fuel and labor.
There are other ways to do things that still involve subsidies that would make more sense. Higher fuel taxes for POVs, big tax breaks for fuel used by trucking firms, and congestion charges in congestion zones that trucks are exempt from would save $ for supermarket customers — all while continuing to subsidize the road system.
I’ll also reply some of your comments at the bottom.
I agree 100% with the rest of your argument, but I do think delineating the space around the hydrants is a good idea. This would obviously cost some money, but perhaps the parking permit revenue could cover that cost.
Regardless of how you feel about cars and parking, drivers should be able to easily tell whether they are parked legally or not. You are supposed park 15 feet from a hydrant, but unless you carry a tape measure with you, there is no way to know if you are parked legally. Free parking or not, this is stupid and inefficient.
The stupid thing is that at some point the city spent money to paint yellow curbs in front of many fire hydrants, but these do not mean anything. As the city parking guide clearly states “Yellow curbs DO NOT indicate where you can park your car” WTF?!
Actually you didn’t always have to park 15 feet from a hydrant. Years ago hydrants used to have a number painted on them to indicate how many feet you should be away from them anywhere from 8 to 15, and police would rarely give tickets unless you were closer than 6 feet from a hydrant. All this changed in the City’s quest for making money, when it was decided that 15 should be the number, and 14 i/2 feet meant a ticket.
Also, it makes no sense to not allow parking at broken hydrants, other than the City would lose revenue. A proposal to allow it was first introduced when Koch was mayor. Instead of it being allowed, a promise was made to fix or remove all broken hydrants, but of course this was never done.
Two problems:
1. You don’t want to give drivers an incentive to vandalize hydrants.
2. What if FDNY wants to come and fix the hydrant and a car is parked in front of it? And what if it wants to use it later?
Never said that painting the hydrants a certain color is the best way to mark them as inoperable, as the Councilmnan suggested. Perhaps the fire department could apply a decal that could not be copied or removed.
If they wanted to fix it, they could very simply just remove the decal. Doesn’t the Police department have temprary no parking signs for street fairs and such? The Fire Department could do the same.
I don’t in principle object to letting people park in front of broken hydrants, but it seems like a tremendous waste of time to worry about putting up decals and stuff to make what could amount to a few dozen temporary parking spaces at any given time. I mean, seriously, spend the money on something more useful, like feeding homeless pigeons.
Love the way you just make up numbers. It’s been estimated conservatively that the number is near 500 citywide, not just a few dozen.
There are also hundreds of spaces or maybe a thousand or more citywide where parking is banned for no good reason other than DOT doesn’t want to bother to review existing regulations to see the regulations are still needed because they have no interest in increasing parking.
Example 1, temporary construction restrictions are often not removed for months after construction has been completed.
Example 2, near me they banned a space near a corner in order so people could see approaching cars a stop sign. A traffic signal replaced the stop sign about ten years ago but the space was never restored. Every additional parking space in a congested area would mean fewer cars circling the block looking for one, and less pollution. But people like you would argue every time you create an additional parking space, someone goes out and purchases an automobile which is utterly ridiculous.
500 parking spots out of a couple million citywide.
But it matters if it’s the parking spot you get.
That’s like saying no attention should be paid to a deadly disease that only affects 500 out of a couple of million people. It matters if you are the one who has it.
We are not talking about massive amounts of resources to enable those parking spots. Also, if only one spot is prohibited because of a broken hydrant for five years, think of all the cars that could have used it in that period of time and the amount of pollution not generated by ten or twenty minutes of cars not circling around the block. Amazing what you can do with the same statistic.
The idea that making parking easier reduces pollution is one of those arsenic-is-actually-good-for-you stories meant to console drivers about their overconsumption of resources: look, the problem isn’t you, it’s all the people you hate. It’s much more attractive to the middle class than the fact that the only ways to reduce car pollution are to drive less and drive more fuel-efficient cars.
What do I hate? You seem the to be the one who “hates” anyone who drives when that may be the best choice for them.
Until transit improved to make it a viable choice in all situations, instead of being continually cutback and made more inconvenient for the elderly, inform and handicapped by wider spacing of bus stops, people will continue to drive. (Why should transferring between a local and limited or SBS bus count as the only bus transfer you are allowed in making a trip for one fare? It shouldn’t, because not everyone can buy an unlimited pass.)
And why should someone travel for 60 to 90 minutes when the same auto trip takes 10 minutes? Cars are a necessity for many, maybe not where you live, but they are in many other parts of the City.
Right. Not everyone can take transit, and therefore making parking more convenient reduces driving.
Okay, I get it. Now you are being sarcastic. It’s a little different when you are talking about adding ten parking spaces in a neighborhood that has a severe shortage of parking and you are reducing the time it takes to look for a spot from 20 minutes to 5 minutes, because that does reduce the amount of driving. People aren’t going to run out and buy more cars because of that.
The situation that you are inferring is building hundreds of parking spaces to ensure that one is always available. That was not what I was discussing (except for park and ride), because you are correct in that instance, that would encourage driving over mass transit.
People’s decision about whether to drive and take transit includes how easy it is to park.
A deadly disease kills people. Looking for parking doesn’t.
Adding ten parking spaces in a neighborhood that has a severe shortage of parking will not reduce the time it takes to look for a spot from 20 minutes to 5 minutes. It will reduce it to something closer to 19 minutes and 59 seconds. And adding a large number of parking spaces will only encourage more people to buy cars (and to buy more cars), so at the end of the day, it will be just as hard as it ever was to find parking, only now there will be more cars driving around.
You are correct about adding a large number of spaces in a single neighborhood if it significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to look for a parking spot.
But according to you adding 10 spaces only reduces looking by one second, so to reduce it by 20 minutes, you would need 1,200 additional spaces to make any real difference where someone would go out and buy a car. Right? Or would someone say, “I’m now going to buy a car because now I can find a spot one second faster.”
Anyway, we weren’t talking about adding massive amounts of parking spaces. I was talking about adding 10 spaces in a neighborhood and it would make a difference of more than one second. If you have ever driven around for 20 minutes looking for a space (which I try to avoid like hell doing) you would know that within that time you usually just miss one or two spots by a few seconds by someone just beating you to that space. Even one or two additional spots could make a difference in 5 or 10 minutes, because it could mean the difference between just missing a parking space and finding one five seconds before the other guy does.
Of course you never have to look for a parking space so it doesn’t really matter to you. That’s why you don’t care how difficult it could be in some places.
Once again, the effect of 10 additional spaces is negligible.
I’ve owned several cars in the city, and I’ve parked them on the street. I’ve often wished that I could pay a few dollars rather than drive around in endless circles – my time may not be worth much, but it is worth something. And when I no longer needed a car, having to pay to park it would have given me an extra push to get rid of the car sooner.
Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Andrew,
If the parking spaces in the neighborhood are so valuable which they probably are, you are not the only one who would rather pay something to save time looking. My guess is that so would everyone else. Okay, so now everyone is paying for what was once free. How does that make more spaces available? Only if people give up their car. Yes a few would. Others would just pay or move out because they feel enough is enough. Lower demand lowers real estate values which lowers taxes collected and the implications are are flung. So you still have not convinced me why this is a good idea.
True, but that doesn’t mean we should make it as difficult as possible to park and at the same time continue to make it more difficult to use mass transit by further cutting service, spacing bus stops further, not making it easier to transfer between locals, unlimiteds and SBS, not spending any additional operating monies to extend or reroute bus routes, etc.
If you are going to make it harder to park for those forced to rely on their cars because of an inadequate mass transit system, I want to see corresponding immediate improvements to the same clientele you are penalizing, not vague promises of a new subway line which won’t be available for another 20 years and which may not even benefit them with no assurances that all revenue collected will even go mass transit in the first place.
You actually believe that NYC will turn over revenue from parking permits to the MTA when the Mayor doesn’t even allow the City to pay its fair share for student and senior passes having shifted most of that burden to the State who is also shortchanging the MTA?
Nobody is “forced” to rely on cars because of an inadequate mass transit system. People choose where to live, and transit access can be a factor in that decision.
Most New York City households don’t have cars. Somehow they get by.
True, Andrew.
So you are saying that no one should be living in areas with inadequate mass transit or if they choose to live there, they should not drive and accept the fact that most trips more than a few miles will take them one to three hours each way by mass transit? Not a very realistic assumption.
And most of the households without cars are not from areas with inadequate mass transit. They are from areas with good or excellent mass transit.
There may be hundreds, but are there hundreds that would yield a single useful parking spot? Probably not. Many are probably in no-parking zones to begin with. We really might be talking about the benefit of a few dozen spots at any given time.
I don’t know where you get the idea I said that someone goes out an purchases an automobile every time a single space is made available. That doesn’t mean, that up to a very high number, an additional parking spot doesn’t attract an additional car to park in it. And I don’t accept your premise that it’s automatically a good thing to accommodate an additional car every opportunity we get.
The estimate is around 500. Of those I would gave that maybe 100 or 150 are in bus stops or no parking zones. That would leave about 350 that would matter. They either need to be repaired, removed or parking should be allowed there. I don’t where you get a “few dozen” citywide from that number. Maybe you weren’t the one who made the remark, but someone stated that every time you make it easier to park somewhere (and that includes adding one parking space because that makes it easier), you encourage people to drive and buy cars.
As I previously stated several times, I believe that notion is ridiculous. You would have to make a significant improvement in the parking situation at both ends of the trip someone might make for him to purchase a car for that reason. Adding even 500 spaces citywide does not qualify as a major improvement, but there are those who argue that people will go out and by a car if those spaces suddenly become available.
No one benefits from circling the block for 20 minutes looking for a spot and even reducing that time by five minutes which adding a few spaces would do, benefits everyone because of less congestion and pollution. No one is forcing you to accept that premise.
Just because they could theoretically be available for parking doesn’t mean they matter. If there are 350 that could be parked in front of, how many are here and how many are here and how many are here? You’re just not going to get 350 meaningful spaces out of it. I’d still be shocked if you got dozens.
I don’t know about buying cars, but additional parking spaces in theory encourage people to use space for cars, and that’s certainly not intrinsically a good thing. (It takes more than just parking to get people to buy cars.)
Reply at bottom also.
Have fire hydrants be placed on curb extensions.
What would that accomplish?
Legally, can you have a tax on a certain segment of NYC residents if their residential area falls into one of the parking payment zones while people 5-10 blocks away don’t even if the area outside the zone has residents with the same or higher incomes? Or would you have to enforce it city-wide, so that people parking in Tottenville get hit with the same on-street parking fee (though at possibly a lower rate) than those living on the Upper East Side? It seems to me as though there are as many legal minefields in this one as there were with the congestion pricing plan.
It’s not a tax. It’s a fee for making of use of property (the street) that you don’t own.
“It’s a fee for making of use of property (the street) that you don’t own.”
Your right. Nobody owns the street. However, property owners own the sidewalk directly outside their building. Using your reasoning, all property owners should have the right to park their cars on the sdiewalk directly in front of their houses.
They don’t own it, they just are required to maintain it.
Whoa! You described NYC as having “obscenely high taxes”! If word gets out about this you’ll only be welcome at Tea Party rallies, and they don’t have those in NYC.
Eric, you know damn well that the fiscal conservatives who want to make government better and the Tea Party types who want to rant about welfare are two different sets of people. In Germanic Europe they’d vote for two separate parties, too.
If NYC didn’t have to subsidize red states and teabagger entitlements so much, maybe we could afford a tax break!
I don’t get why some people here have made cars their #1 enemy. If car drivers make MORE than those who ride mass transit, don’t we want to attract more car owners into NYC so that they will spend money and pay taxes? If you make it harder for wealthier people from the suburbs to drive into NYC, that is ok. They will just do all their shopping in the suburbs. And you will see sales tax revenue in NYC plummet.
NYC isnt having any trouble attracting wealthy car owners. Have you been asleep since the mid 90s?
Nobody has made cars their enemy. That’s a paranoid fantasy of authoritarian tabloids. People are just trying to use cars properly here.
We’ve tried the car strategy. That’s how we ended up with places like Chelsea Piers — mediocre beer and terrible accessibility for residents (suicidal even, crossing that highway).
Suburbanites pretty much already do their shopping in the suburbs. There’s little reason to come into NYC, spending more in gas and tolls, to shop for anything you can find in a suburban mall closer to home, one that will probably have cheaper products anyway. There might be reason to come in for high-end niche items, fancy restaurants, Broadway, or any tourist thing that comes with “being in NYC.” I’m not sure Seth Pinsky has figured that out yet.
It would be cute if you could bid on parking spots. Highest bidder gets to always park in their spot. Maybe they can even leave their car during street cleaning, except then they are responsible for keeping the spot clean.
People will part with their money more easily if they understand they’re getting a benefit. The non-reserved spots can be fre parking for everyone else, subsidized by the reserved spaces. 🙂
-danny
Theres something similar. Its a smart phone app. However, its just a small fee to notify other app users when and where a spot will open up as the car owner vacates his/her spot.
As a data point, borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London is charging between $106 and $248 per year based on C02 emissions.
See here for reference
My 2 cents:
The best situation would be where everyone pays for their own costs: ie, transit systems and roads all pay for themselves, including costs caused by pollution, accidents, maintenance, space taken up, etc. I frankly do not see why public space should be given over for free to drivers. That space belongs to all of society, and I see no reason it should be used solely for parking when there is such high demand for space in the city. The city could make a lot of money leasing that space, which could be spent in ways that would help all of society rather than just people who drive.
Also for the record I oppose any policy that restricts cars but does not pay for costs they impose, or that would force drivers to pay more than the costs they impose. Cars have a role in the city’s transportation system, but because they are so space-inefficient they also are uniquely poorly suited to cities that are defined by their lack of space.
I agree. In a city with such high land values, it’s astonishing how much space is given away for free, or nearly-free, for the purposes of using and storing cars (while no similar accommodation is made available to people without cars).
I also find it amusing (but also frustrating) that drivers attribute their difficulties in driving to everyone but other drivers. It’s hard to find parking, and the streets are congested, because of too many cars – not because of pedestrians or pedestrian plazas or bike lanes or bus lanes. If you want to have an easier time parking or driving, you want other drivers to stop driving. And the best (most efficient and most equitable) way to do that is to raise the price, perhaps (but not necessarily) using the revenue gained to fund other transportation modes.
Driving and parking in this city is severely underpriced, to everyone’s detriment. (Note that I did not say that driving and parking are inexpensive. I said they’re underpriced. Expensive things can still be underpriced.)
Give it away to people to sell stuff. At least that would add value to the economy.
In other words, all that space devoted to cars has an opportunity cost – any space devoted to cars is space that can’t be devoted to something else.
We’ve seen that on Prospect Park West, we’ve seen that in Times Square, we’ve seen that on 34th Street, we’ve seen that with the proposed SoHo pop-up cafes.
I was being mildly ironic, but yep. Like I said above, I see little reason why every inch of space that could be dedicated to cars should be.
I have no problem with the pop-up cafes as long as they don’t increase congestion.
Do you ever think there is a better use for public space than making sure that drivers can drive quickly?
In your opinion, might it ever be appropriate to allocate public space in such a way that “congestion” (for drivers, presumably) is not minimized? Does ease of driving always trump all other concerns, or are there ever exceptions?
Let me understand what you are saying. Are you saying that in certain instances it may make sense to deliberately cause congestion for drivers so someone can have an additional place to stop for a cup of coffee, or a place to sit down and rest which may go unoccupied 80% of the time, a place to ride a bike which may have one bike per hour, or a few extra feet to maneuver on a sidewalk?
The only one of the above examples that might increase congestion which I would support would be to widen a severely congested sidewalk. And when I mean severely congested, I am talking about one that is so crowded that it is impossible to pass and people have to walk on the street to get by because the sidewalk is that crowded. And if there is another way to facilitate movement by removing a newsstand for example, I would relocate that before I would widen the sidewalk.
It never makes sense to cause congestion. However, when congestion occurs, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be priced away or eliminated by some other means. Just because there is auto congestion doesn’t mean the auto traffic is the most important traffic. In a place like New York, it’s down near the bottom of the list, behind the pedestrians, transit, and life-sustaining delivery trucks — maybe it’s on par in importance with bikers. Maybe.
So you think cars are no more important to this city’s economy than bicycles? All people can just go anywhere with bicycles during all types of weather. That isn’t even worth addressing.
But you are right about the rest of what you say, and no one said that automobiles are the most important type of traffic. And all that has nothing to do with charging for street parking or not.
I should clarify. I don’t mean all cars, but yes, POV trips are about as important as bicycle trips. I shouldn’t say the vehicle itself is important, because it really never is – car, bike, train, or whatever. It’s the trip that matters.
Apologies for the poorly constructed synecdoche.
Comment at bottom also.
Aside from all of these theoretical arguments about who’s subsidizing whom, which are quite pointless considering that pretty much all forms of transportation (except walking and biking perhaps) have been subsidized heavily for the better part of the past century, it seems politically stupid for the city to have free street parking. By forgoing resident parking, the city is making it more difficult (costly) for city residents with cars to park near their homes because nonresidents circle like vultures for free spots. More importantly, it is forgoing a significant revenue stream that could help fund street improvements (or mass transit if we believe in cross-subsidization of transportation modes). If say 40% of New Yorkers have cars and the city charged $20/year for a resident parking permit, that’s $64 million in additional revenue. Considering that $20 per year is pretty cheap for a parking permit in a place as dense as New York, this is probably a low end estimate. Why should the city forgo making parking easier for legitimate residents while making money at the same time? The nonresidents who are mooching off of the city’s free street space don’t have a vote in New York City, so there would likely be very little legitimate political pushback from residents, most of whom would probably pay a few bucks to keep Jersey, LI and Westchester drivers out of their spots.
First of all, the places where the non-residents circle the street like vultures looking for free spots are usually neighborhoods with good mass transit and they are parking there so as not to make their entire trip by car and may even be spending some money in that neighborhood. Last I heard we live in a free country, by not allowing non-residents to park in certain neighborhoods, how many of those people will now take their car straight to their destination instead of making part of the trip by mass transit?
Another problem is that historically it has been shown once you give government the right to charge for something, they will never be satisfied with that charge. Like a drug addict, they will continue to raise it at every possible opportunity. So what may start out as a reasonable $20 charge could easily become $100 in just a few years. Just look at what has happened to the MTA bridge and tunnel tolls up from 50 cents to $6.50. Parking meter rates from 5 or 10 cents an hour to $3 an hour. And every time you allow more fees and government to raise those fees it gives them less reason to be more efficient with the resources they have.
On a citywide basis, park-and-riders make up a negligible share of street parkers. The reason they don’t drive all the way now is that parking is expensive and/or very hard at their destination, and that isn’t going to change. (On the contrary, if they can pay a few dollars in exchange for reliably finding a parking space, they may find the park-and-ride option more attractive.)
Historically it has been shown that once you give people the right to store their personal property on public land for free, they will whine incessantly whenever anybody suggests that everyone would be better off if that public space were instead rented for a price.
If you’re worried about efficiency, I might suggest that allocating as much space as we do to storage of cars is a highly inefficient use of space.
Most of what you say is correct. However, storage of cars for the vast majority of the spaces is the most efficient use of space there is. Even if you choose to widen sidewalks where necessary, build pop-up cafes, add bicycle parking or bicycle lanes, place benches for people to sit, etc, what are you talking? 1% of the spaces? 5%, 10%? or would you replace all curbside residential parking throughout the City with bicycle lanes that would rarely be used?
“Despite wallet-busting rents, obscenely high taxes and a cost of living nearly unrivaled elsewhere in the country, the city has no problem turning over valuable street space to empty parked cars.”
hold on – new yorkers are hammered six ways to sunday, therefor we should be hammered the seventh way too? this is a sick as it gets.
Are you contending that all those things added together pays for the entire roads, highway and non-highway alike, system?
Transit subsidies at least arguably have no negative externalities and plenty of positive ones. I am rather annoyed at the amount of unnecessary waste in transit agencies, but that can at least in part be blamed on auto interests not wanting efficient competition anyway anyway. :-\
Either way, if transit had to be subsidized, I wouldn’t object.
I don’t? That’s news to me.
Gee, how wonderful for everyone who isn’t in a car.
Well, that sucks (if it’s even true), but it’s hardly a reason to go without the benefits for many more people who are not in cars — including fewer people dying!
Um, if you’re going to have cars in parks, for a fixed amount of time every day, the worst time seems like rush hour — at least the afternoon rush hour.
I’d rather know what exactly would happen if that policy were undertaken before commenting on it.
Either way, it’s a park. It seems perfectly reasonable to have it be car-free.
I’m not going to bother with fancy quotes so try to follow along.
You might have more facts than I do so I won’t debate with you if everything I mentioned completely pays for the roads or not, but I don’t see why it should anyway since automobile drivers are not the only recipients of the benefits of roads and highways.
I don’t see how you can blame the auto industry for waste at this MTA or other transit agencies. That is really a stretch. Do drivers and the auto industry have to be cause of all evil all the time with you?
Explain to me how fewer people are dying because road capacity was cut in half on 65th Street forcing everyone to stop more and drive more slowly wasting their time (which costs money) and causing more pollution which causes people to get sick and raises health costs.
The reason you can still drive through the parks during rush hours is because that’s when traffic is the heaviest and banning cars in the parks during those times would have the most detrimental effects on traffic outside of the park.
Also, where is it written that you can only enjoy the park on foot or bike and not by a leisurely automobile ride through the park although I will admit that not too many people do that anymore. (I used to drive through Prospect Park occasionally just to admire the foliage.) Don’t forget that’s why the Central and Prospect Park had rodes in them in the first place, so people could enjoy it in their car or horse-drawn carriage.
I can’t decide if I’m more surprised that you ever had a job at the MTA or that they didn’t get rid of you sooner. Your ideas on urban planning in the country’s most densely populated city are downright stupid.
Straight out of the 50’s, wouldn’t you say?
It’s hard for the MTA to fire people outright, but they can shift people around as damage control.
What do you even know about the 1950s? You didn’t even live through them like I did. All you know is from the little you’ve read about them.
What is say about the MTA is correct. But I certainly don’t like the inference you are making. You know absolutely nothing about what I did at the MTA. For you to attack me like that is totally uncalled for. But you have to get back somehow because you can’t do it on the facts.
It’s real easy just to call someone stupid. Much easier than debating the points.
I accomplished more for mass transit than you will ever know and probably more than you ever will accomplish. And the MTA didn’t “get rid of me.” I was there for nearly 25 years and they never even tried to fire me.
I just did the quote thing to carry the conversation down from above, for your convenience.
No, automobile drivers are certainly not the only beneficiaries. However, I think you are seeing them as existing in a vacuum. It still costs everyone, whether they drive or not, something to accommodate automobiles. Hell, heavier users of automobiles are enjoying subsidies from lighter users — is that fair? You probably drive a fraction as much as someone in Staten Island, and you’re probably, at some level, subsidizing his lifestyle. But heck, we can debate whether that’s a good thing. It’s reality, but whether it’s the reality we want is a whole other question.
Here’s where I think we end up with a real problem: the costs just don’t stop there. Subsidizing people’s driving — essentially paying people to drive — has other externalities. I’m sure we’ve all heard of climate change and local air quality issues, and I don’t think I need to go into those (you believe them to be problems or you don’t). There are actual local economic issues too, some of which drastically affect poorer non-drivers most of all. The automobile congestion in NYC actually makes it more expensive to deliver food and other goods to the point that NYC has some of the country’s higher retail food costs. NYC employers incur billions in economic costs of lowered productivity because goods, services, workers, and even commuters are sitting in traffic.
BTW, I wasn’t blaming the auto industry for waste at Amtrak or the MTA. Their waste is secondary to the real problem. The regulatory regime in place today makes rail very impractical outside of its niche. Compare to Germany or Switzerland, where a rural passenger line can effectively provide public transportation in lieu of a bus. A lot of the USA’s mess stays in place because trucking, auto industry, and airline industry lobbies actively fear rail eating into their industries (perhaps rightly so).
I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about on 65th Street. There has been a statistical reduction in accidents because of Times Square and PPW changes. Are you saying a net increase in local emissions is causing (or going to cause) more deaths than would have occurred if the traffic remained maximized and speeding continued to be facilitated? It might be a leap to say there even was a net increase.
I addressed many of your other points below but don’t think I saw this one:
If it now takes twice the amount of time to make a trip involving more stopping and starting, I think it is safe to say there is a net increase in pollution. If that will cause more deaths over the long haul, who is to say they will or will not. But I don’t believe the discussion was about whether these lane closures (and I never said I was against all of them) save lives or not. Maybe they do and maybe they don’t, but who said that was the only issue? People’s time is also an issue, and let us not get into a theoretical debate as to which is more important saving lives or saving time.
I also don’t recall reading anywhere how people were speeding along 65th Street and a lane was taken away to reduce speeding.
[…] COMMUTE: The hipsters are at it again. Ben Kabak of Second Avenue Sagas wonders publicly if everyone in the city should always have to pay for on-street parking. New York City now views […]
Okay here are my comments: Hope I didn’t miss any posts.
<blockquote cite=If you’re a city taxpayer, in that scenario you’re undeniably paying for me indirectly as long as I’m not paying 100% of the costs of my own driving (my share of road usage, parking costs, etc.). I don’t think this can really be disputed, and I think that’s what most people who talk about subsidies are getting at. In economic and I guess accounting terms, driving has some combination of attributable fixed and variable costs. It doesn’t take a lot of effort going through government data to show these aren’t covered.
The other thing you mention, about cafes, is opportunity cost — which I don’t think most people here are considering, though I think that’s what Andrew was talking about (I don’t want to speak for him). Yes, in taking space with another possible use and using it for parking, the opportunity cost is the other activity and whatever revenue that activity would generate (of course, it’s not hard to beat curbside parking, so this can be big ). I would guess this can be really $big$ in busy places, economically (but not necessarily socially) meaningless in others. So unless we’re talking about commercial strips, particularly mixed use ones, mainly the total cost in the first paragraph is in play. Less obvious, room to lounge around and whatever is also a form of opportunity cost. Times Square lost parking and gained lawn chairs — no direct revenue was in play.
However, all that ignores indirect costs of driving. It’s hard to put a dollar amount on air quality. If you want to go into it, at some level, you’re paying for the smog, climate change, and healthcare costs that are the result of current policy. This stuff is all really hard to quantify.
What can I say here? So what if I subsidize to some small degree people who are driving. I subsidize a lot of things I may never use, public schools, welfare, most City funded museums, parks, etc. The question is if a charge for residential parking is instituted, will my taxes drop because I would no longer be subsidizing automobile drivers? The answer is no. the City would just use that money for something else I don’t need. So why should I even care.
About other uses such as cafes. I didn’t say I was totally against them. What I said was all these other uses you speak of maybe amounts to 1% of parking spaces and that I would be against a pop-up cafe only if it increased congestion in an area that was already congested. You didn’t say you were pro-congestion did you? So I think we agree on that one.
As far as driving and air quality, that is another issue entirely. I still don’t see its relation to charging for residential parking.
<blockquote cite=However, a subsidized road is not the same as subsidized road use. People buying items at supermarkets are paying more because of subsidized POV use, not less. Deliveries throughout the region are more expensive thanks to the unpredictable nature of traffic and the attendant wasted fuel and labor.
There are other ways to do things that still involve subsidies that would make more sense. Higher fuel taxes for POVs, big tax breaks for fuel used by trucking firms, and congestion charges in congestion zones that trucks are exempt from would save $ for supermarket customers — all while continuing to subsidize the road system.
First, I’m not getting into another debate about congestion pricing here. Second, again you are talking about punishing the private automobile owner as if the is the one causing all the congestion and needs to be singled out. That is just not true. He doesn’t cause much of the congestion in dense areas like Midtown Manhattan in the first place.
There are many other reasons: blocked lanes due to construction and utility repairs; trucks making deliveries due to inadequate delivery zones, congestion caused by taxis, buses, 40 foot limos, etc. etc. It is also caused by poor City planning and bad zoning.
In areas where it is the fault of the car, the reason there are so many could be because of inadequate mass transit where the car driver is more of a victim being forced to drive, rather than the villain. I know, I know, in your world no one is “forced” to drive, they always have choices — they could have chosen to live where there was better mass transit. But did it ever occur to you that perhaps they wanted to but just couldn’t afford it because the real estate near mass transit was just too expensive?
The point is that I don’t see how the POV is the villain in all this and needs to be punished like a little kid doing the wrong thing. The villain is society for not promoting and funding a better mass transit system.
<blockquote cite=Just because they could theoretically be available for parking doesn’t mean they matter. If there are 350 that could be parked in front of, how many are here and how many are here and how many are here? You’re just not going to get 350 meaningful spaces out of it. I’d still be shocked if you got dozens.
I don’t know about buying cars, but additional parking spaces in theory encourage people to use space for cars, and that’s certainly not intrinsically a good thing. (It takes more than just parking to get people to buy cars.)
What’s the point of the Google maps? Are you saying that virtually all (460 out of 500) broken hydrants are in places where people don’t need additional parking spaces because they are in industrial areas or places where there is ample parking anyway? That is utter nonsense. I’ve already conceded that perhaps 150 out of 500 were in No Parking zones where it wouldn’t matter, but what you are saying is just preposterous and I can even prove it. It just so happens that every single day (and I swear this is the truth) I guess somehow by an amazing coincidence, I have to look for a parking space everyday just 2 short blocks from your first Google picture which looks like there are all the parking spaces in the world there, and 50% of the time I circle around the block once to find a space. So I would appreciate knowing if one of the hydrants I am passing is not functional and I could be parking there.
You also say it is not intrinsically good to add a parking space because it encourages it to be used for such. I say it is intrinsically good, because it means one car driving around less causing less pollution by finding a spot quicker.
(Last item in next post)
Sorry, busy week, haven’t had time to read/respond.
I don’t know if your taxes would drop, but they would probably stop increasing at such a clip. I don’t think the subsidy question is such a huge deal myself, though it starts to get a little bit more questionable when a harmful behavior is being subsidized. I mostly only brought it up in response to cretinous comments from the likes of ferryboi, who insinuated that people who don’t drive don’t work or carry their own weight.
Then who does? If there weren’t POVs in midtown, there wouldn’t be a congestion problem.
I don’t see how things like congestion charging are punishment. In the event I drive, I prefer to get where I’m going. I’d rather pay more to do that. But then, my time is usually worth a hell of a lot more than an incidental charge. Paying people to drive who don’t value their time at more than the cost of their driving is simple absurdity.
The point of Google Maps was just to say, the hydrants could be anywhere. Even if we accept your figure that 350 out of 500 hydrants could yield useable parking spots, it’s a huge leap to say they’re in places where they yield useful spots. Somehow I suspect the most likely places for long-term broken hydrants are the least likely places to get visitors.
Except likely the result is the opposite: more cars driving around because more space opens up. That depends on circumstance, but is a common result anywhere parking is scarce.
FYI, the blockquote HTML format is:
<blockquote>paragraph</blockquote>
Something screwy going on. The HTML worked perfect in the preview pane. Don’t know what happened. Hope you can figure out what you said and what I said.
Anyway this is the last item. Let’s see if it works this time:
If I understand you, you are saying that a trip is a trip and some are more important than others and it doesn’t matter what mode you use, because a bicycle trip can be as important as an auto trip, so cars are no more important than bicycles so we shouldn’t give them any higher priority? Is that correct?
If so, that makes absolutely no sense. Not only is it not a case against automobiles, it isn’t even a case promoting mass transit. Of course a bike trip could be just as important as a car trip. But so what? It doesn’t mean you need to convert auto lanes to bike lanes.
Cars are superior to bikes anyway you look at it. They provide weather protection, can be driven for longer distances, go faster, etc. There is no way you can replace cars with bikes on any meaningful scale no matter how many bike lanes you build.
If I understand you, you are saying that a trip is a trip and some are more important than others and it doesn’t matter what mode you use, because a bicycle trip can be as important as an auto trip, so cars are no more important than bicycles so we shouldn’t give them any higher priority? Is that correct?
If so, that makes absolutely no sense. Not only is it not a case against automobiles, it isn’t even a case promoting mass transit. Of course a bike trip could be just as important as a car trip. But so what? It doesn’t mean you need to convert auto lanes to bike lanes.
Cars are superior to bikes anyway you look at it. They provide weather protection, can be driven for longer distances, go faster, etc. There is no way you can replace cars with bikes on any meaningful scale no matter how many bike lanes you build.
Sorry Ben, but this reads arrogant rich white kiddie, in heavy crayola scrawl.
Real adults have jobs which require cars, not just to get to work but during the work day. They also have kids who need to be ferried around, others have tools, work gear or (gasp!) frivolous things used for fun which you can’t haul on the subway. e.g. several people in my last building, who do the low-paid work nobody else wants park their old cars on the street. They’re taking care of your grandparents, restocking grocery shelves, running sales routes and driving the radio car city planner types take to the airport.
I’ve used public transit for most of my time in nyc, and after initially being amazed at a system that seemed to go everywhere, every day all day I’ve learned that it’s a wretched experience after a while. Of course it’s the only way to move people around during peak hours in the densely packed areas, but it’s also incredibly slow, filthy and does not allow one to carry objects of more than trivial size. The time someone kindly sneezed on my groceries brought that home rather clearly.
Perhaps if MTA transit were not a form of punishment there would be less need for a car, but as of now I’m thinking we could sweep some of those road-blocking MTA buses off the road and reclaim bus stops as parking spaces. You can walk faster than the bus on many lines; replace those with vans for (only) the disabled.
“Real adults” with their kids also need places to live, but my rent isn’t free. Why should your car live outside my apartment with no charge?
Because his car is already paying to use and park on the City streets, its called the City Auto Use tax but you don’t want to hear that because your mind is made up and no one could change it no matter what facts are presented.
If you want him to have to pay for it make sure it is available for him to use whenever he wants to park there, so that he doesn’t have to hunt for a spot for a half hour and still pay.
Excellent idea. But when all of those bus riders now have to buy cars and start driving, where are you going to put their cars? They won’t fit in the abandoned bus stops – there are far too many of them.
I agree with 90% of what you say except for the last paragraph. Getting buses off the road is not the answer. If they are too slow, figure out a way to make them run faster. Vans take up more space than buses, so replacing buses with vans would only make the streets more congested, not less. And what constitutes disabled? Sometimes people just have some difficulty walking part of the time or can’t walk far distances. You can’t decide who should be entitled to use a van and who would not be allowed if there were no buses. You are oversimplifying things.
He’s worse than oversimplifying. He’s being deliberately obtuse and chauvinist. His “real adults” comment (everyone can pretty much stop reading after that — he doesn’t even qualify a single one of his claims) is just a way of excluding everyone who disagrees with him as even being worthy of having an opinion. As if no one who uses transit has kids,* needy parents, or other things they need to do. His comment about groceries being sneezed on his akin to saying one will never drive again because of one traffic jam or fender bender.
* they just don’t need to be ferried around by car, because they can use a safe and convenient, if imperfect, public transportation system.
Somehow I missed that part about “real adults.”
http://www2.grist.org/pdf/carwars.pdf
I don’t know if they have much say in the matter. They can finance the projects they’re given money for.
Probably depends. If you mean, by cutting busier services, I suppose. If they’re cutting administrative overhead, they’re doing well. And cutting conductors and token booth clerks is a mixed bag, at worst.
Hmm, maybe. It would help if the SAS and other projects were built at a reasonable cost, though. (That applies to roads too.)
Wasn’t it kind of the original point of BK’s blog post?
All that needs to be done here is somehow make the cost (penalty) of registering out of state higher than the cost of registering instate. Not a tough problem.
I’ve heard that…in the context of preventing local congestion and air pollution, but not just hoarding parking.
I don’t think there’s much hope for P&Rs on any of the current subway system. It’s basically de-improvement to destroy a structure with high economic value and create one with low economic value anyway. Future P&Rs would have to be built-in, and R.M. probably prevented that too.
Not too much to comment on. Agree with most of what you said.
Just want to bring up two points:
1) I reread Ben’s original post and he does mention cars with out-of-state plates. The problem is he is assuming that most or all of them are illegitimate and he has no way of knowing that unless he sees the same plates over and over again for more than six months. But as you mentioned, there are other ways to fix that problem besides requiring residential parking permits.
2) Park and Ride: Yes it may be difficult because much of land is already occupied with higher intensity uses than parking, but there are places you could do it. Many municipal lots could be double-decked or garages built in their place. Right adjacent to one of the entrances to the Sheepshead Bay Station sits unused land under the el right near the Belt Parkway which has room for 50 or 100 cars and has always been unused and serves no purpose whatsoever. Adding a Park and Ride there could also generate revenue. But instead of looking for such spaces to develop or make better use of municipal parking lots, the City has taken the opposite tact, i.e. sell off those lots and replace it with more development further increasing congestion.
Just last evening a developer came to my Community Board seeking to develop a space asking to put in only 23 parking spaces when 46 were legally required somehow claiming that a medical facility and a furniture store wouldn’t require as much parking and somehow promising that this furniture store would never be converted to any other type of business and would always remain a furniture store. When questioned, he also stated that they were not legally required to provide any off-street loading zone for when furniture would need to be delivered. So if you are asking who is causing much of the congestion and shortage of parking we experience in this City, look at City policy and zoning first, not the automobile owner.
I just don’t see much use for P&R within New York City, besides maybe in Staten Island. If the Subway were extended to places like Bayside, Queens, I could see it. Even when I can see it as workable, it seems less-than-ideal. It just encourages more car use.