Parking
Streetsblog Basics
Will de Blasio’s Affordable Housing Plan Take on NYC’s Parking Mandates?
With a plan due by May 1, the clock is ticking for Mayor Bill de Blasio's housing team to come up with a plan to improve housing affordability. Department of Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Vicki Been, who authored reports on the city's regressive parking mandates before joining the administration, is at the center of the team producing the plan. But it's still not clear that the final product will consider the elimination of parking requirements as a strategy to create more affordable housing.
April 9, 2014
Will Michael Schlein Stop NYC EDC From Subsidizing Parking?
This morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the appointment of Michael Schlein as chair of the city's Economic Development Corporation. Schlein, a Wall Street insider with close ties to the mayor, joins EDC President Kyle Kimball atop the agency's leadership. EDC has a terrible track record of subsidizing parking garages and overseeing mega-projects with acres of excess parking. The contours of a new direction under de Blasio -- perhaps one with less parking -- are still taking shape.
April 3, 2014
Eyes on the Street: Illegal Parking Crackdown Coming to Jay Street
Reader Eric McClure spotted these flyers today on cars "up and down Jay Street between Johnson and Willoughby," in the 84th Precinct. This comes a few weeks after attendees at a public workshop identified illegal parking as a major safety hazard and a major source of dysfunction on Jay Street, where pedestrians, cyclists, buses, and private motorists all mix near the Manhattan Bridge approach.
April 2, 2014
Survey: Majority of New Yorkers Would Pay for a Parking Permit
If you own a car in New York City and need a place to park, leaving it on the street is a nice bargain. The only "cost" is alternate-side restrictions for street cleaning -- otherwise, all that space is free. It's such a good deal that in outer-borough neighborhoods, most car owners with an off-street space at home still choose to leave their cars at the curb.
March 12, 2014
Parking Madness 2014: Send Us Your Pics of Awful Parking Craters
It's March, which can only mean one thing: Parking Madness time. Last year we asked our readers to help us crown the worst parking crater in an American city, and in that inaugural 16-entry bracket, Tulsa blew away the competition. But we know there are still plenty of other parking lots out there that make downtown look like a lunar landscape, so here comes the sequel.
March 10, 2014
Two Trees: Less-Parking-for-More-Affordable-Housing a No Go at Domino
In his first big stand on development, Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to wring more affordable housing out of the Domino Sugar Factory project on the Williamsburg waterfront. The mixed-use plan currently calls for 2,284 housing units, 29 percent of them affordable. The mayor is looking for more affordable housing, while so far developer Two Trees Management has offered to solidify its existing commitments.
February 28, 2014
It’s Not the Bike Lane, Stupid: Double-Parking Caused By Poor Curb Policies
Probably the dumbest part of a stupendously dumb Post story about double-parking tickets and the Columbus Avenue bike lane is this:
February 27, 2014
DCP Flubs Research on How Off-Street Parking Affects Traffic
In its latest parking report, the Department of City Planning claimed that residential off-street parking is not linked to increased driving, contradicting previous research. In response, the parking policy experts who produced that research are reprimanding the agency for jumping to conclusions based on insufficient evidence. The flub by DCP could have big consequences, because it undermines part of the rationale for eliminating parking mandates.
February 21, 2014
Nature’s Parking Turnover Calculator
Since the theme of the week is snowy streets and what we can learn from them, I thought I would share this photo of snow-covered windshields I took this morning on Park Place in Prospect Heights. The last significant snowfall came down during the wee hours of Wednesday morning, so these cars clearly have not moved since Tuesday at the latest, and in all likelihood have been immobile since before the Monday snow storm. Alternate side parking has been suspended the whole week, after all.
February 7, 2014