Free Parking Anyone?

Amanda Hickman

Free Parking Anyone?

Last spring, during a rally to call attention to hazardous bridge access for cyclists (prompted by a friend's brush with death on the harrowing maze of highway between any safe bike routes and the Manhattan bridge bike path), I complained that the city and the DOT refuse to do their job and provide safe, accessible streets for all New Yorkers including pedstrians and cyclists. A reporter asked me why I thought that was and I was stumped--I was just mouthing off, I didn't actually have a speech prepared. So why does the Department of Transportation think that their job is to make the streets safe for cars, sidewalk suckers be damned?

I rummaged my brain for answers and declared that the real problem is that the staff at the DOT follow the great suburban American pack instead of showing some leadership and looking at transportation planning and policy from the perspective of a city of 8 million people and 2 million motor vehicles.

This week, though, I stumbed on a much better answer, one that doesn't surprise me in the least: according to a study released by Transportation Alternatives this fall, city workers drive to the office twice as much as anyone else, including well-heeled finance, insurance and real estate workers who can well afford Manhattan parking lot fees. Suddenly its all so clear. Why should the City bother with sidewalks when the very folks who would bother are busy xeroxing parking passes so they can drive to work and avoid the hastle of crowded sidewalks, cramped trains and bike paths that drop you smack in the middle of the BQE.

The DOT apparently has a fix to the Sands street fiasco in the works but since I don't actually have to make nice with them, I won't pretend I'm impressed. It shouldn't take two years of being hounded by activists to get the city to do the right thing.

a note: I get a lot of links and ideas from Gregory Heller who definitely gets credit for NYC vehicle numbers used in this entry.

Posted at 7:10 AM, Dec 09, 2005 in Transportation | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)

Comments

Thanks for the credit Amanda. While I recalculated my numbers recently in response the conjectsion pricing issue, I originally found them with the help of our friend Noel Hidalgowhen we were pulling numbers for ParkingNow.org, the campaign for Motorcycle and Motorscooter parking. New York is woefully out of touch with alternative transportation and parking issues. While other cities have designated on and off street parking for Powered Two Wheeled Vehicls (PTWs), NY has only decreased such parking in recent years, and tickets motorcycles with the same fines as the largest SUVs and trucks. There is also a concerted crackdown around the city on these space saving vehicles with caprecious and arbitrarty check points at the city's bridges, and ticket/tow blitzes in neighborhoods around Manhattan.

There is a book, The High Cost of Free Parking that is on my reading list (but at almost 600 pages, I am not sure when I will get to it). It is all about how absurd free on street parking is, particularly in cities like New York.

And while we are on the topic of cars and the city: too bad Bloomberg is shying away from congestion pricing, however his intention to mandate 4 person cars in the event of a transit strike is good.

And while you are mentioning city workers abusing parking privileges, take a look at the area around the 7th Precinct under the Williamsburg Bridge for some aggregious police personal car parking in intersections and on sidewalks.

Thanks for pointing out the TA study, I am definitely going to give it a read!