Downtown Brooklyn

Parking reform for Downtown Brooklyn -- which would take the mild but worthwhile step of cutting the district's mandatory parking minimums in half -- went before a City Council subcommittee on Monday. The fate of the proposal now comes down to council members Tish James and Steve Levin, who represent the area. The two representatives are talking tough and trying to get DCP to do more -- but what they want has little to do with parking policy.

The New York City Department of City Planning announced yesterday that the City Planning Commission has approved a measure to reduce Downtown Brooklyn's onerous parking minimums. But the commission, chaired by Amanda Burden, appears to have wasted an opportunity to improve on the timid reforms.

Many residents and elected leaders from the neighborhoods near the Barclays Center in Prospect Heights are letting out a sigh of relief after steeling for gridlock this weekend. Sellout crowds for the arena's first events -- three Jay-Z concerts -- did not completely overwhelm nearby neighborhoods with traffic, but the strain on local streets was still clear.

Borough President Marty Markowitz wants to reduce parking minimums in Downtown Brooklyn, and he thinks developers should be able to convert existing parking spots to other uses.

Parking reform in Downtown Brooklyn doesn't go far enough, said developers at a public hearing last night, and the land use committee of Brooklyn Community Board 2 agreed. They want reduced parking requirements to apply not only to new buildings, as proposed by the Department of City Planning, but also to existing buildings and developments under construction. This would allow developers to convert empty floors of parking into retail, housing, or office space.

The proposed reduction of parking minimums in Downtown Brooklyn, though seriously insufficient, is good news for housing affordability and environmental sustainability in New York City. But it's terrible news for those hoping to see broader reforms of New York City's parking requirements. If the Department of City Planning felt so politically constrained that it could only halve parking requirements for market-rate units in Downtown Brooklyn, it's hard to see any meaningful change happening in the rest of the city -- unless residents and activists get serious about advocating for real parking reform.

Downtown Brooklyn's mandatory parking minimums would be cut in half for new development and eliminated outright for affordable housing under a plan from the Department of City Planning. The change is significant -- the first rollback of the costly and car-ownership inducing requirements under the Bloomberg administration -- but doesn't go far enough. Even by DCP's own roundabout admission, the reduced parking minimums will still create an unnecessarily large supply of parking.

Downtown Brooklyn's Willoughby Street plaza, located just off Adams Street, was the forerunner of New York City's current efforts to reclaim roadways as pedestrian spaces. Built in 2006, before Janette Sadik-Khan took over the city Department of Transportation, the city used now-familiar ingredients -- concrete planters and folding chairs -- to close the block to auto traffic and open up space for people to walk and sit.

Walk out on any New York City street and you're likely to find rampant disregard for traffic laws. Pinpointing exactly who's speeding requires special equipment, but for many offenses, you can track the level of lawlessness with the naked eye.