Today’s Headlines

‘…Under existing rules, meters are only suspended for six major legal holidays. The number of off days would grow to about 40 if the bill passes. Meters are also suspended on Sundays.

Gentile said there’s widespread confusion from drivers who don’t realize they have to pay the meters on holidays.

“Inevitably we get a stream of constituents complaining and asking why would the meters still be in effect on a holiday,” he said. “I just want to make it consistent and I don’t want it to be, as it is now, a gotcha system.”

The city brings in around $200 million a year in parking meter revenue, a number that would drop with additional suspensions. The Department of Transportation said they’d review the bill….’

1) solution to confused drivers; simply charge for street parking 365 days a year.

2) $200 million ? Should be at least 10 times that or $2 billion

I’m pretty well primed to disagree with anything the Advance has to say but in this instance I can’t find much about the editorial that I disagree with.

“That part of Richmond Terrace is well-suited for bicycle lanes and
everyone, motorists and city agencies alike, should obey the
restrictions.
The city’s failure to police the lanes and allow habitual scofflaws
to use them as their own personal parking spots makes a mockery (again)
of the whole “Vision Zero” initiative.
Perhaps because so many city and other government employees work in
St. George, however, there always seems to be a different set of rules
in force there.
In this case, the city’s failure to enforce the law on the books only
deepens the public’s cynicism about the competence and fairness of the
agencies that are supposed to do so.”

Agreed.

It is a “gotcha” system right now. But the ones who are getting “got” are the majority of us city residents who don’t drive yet pay taxes to maintain public streets that motorists clog up.

a good argument to increase meter pricing during holidays and weekends 🙂

It’s pretty interesting how different various neighborhood are in regards to parking on holidays. Some become crowded, congested, double parking meccas (good candidates for higher/smart meter rates), some like Park Slope, actually completely empty out. It’s really amazing to see almost 1/3 of the (usually packed, unmetered side street) spots free on some bigger holidays (MLK, labor, memorial, etc).

I guess many people in the slope just keep their cars to go for drives on holidays or long weekends, as normally, day or night, those unmetered spots are packed quite tight. Maybe these folks could benefit from more zipcar type stuff. (as I understand it, the small handful of zipcars in the neighborhood are usually fully booked in advance for weekends).

Maybe. A lot of young folks in those neighborhoods too: maybe they’re just going home to visit family.

Btw, those same neighborhoods are usually the ones where, after a snowstorm, many cars stay uncleaned basically until the next alternate side day. Compared with a good chunk of the outer boros, where almost every car is clean within 24hrs or less.

Most of those neighborhoods actually have plenty of parking at night: since metered commercial streets become free overnight, but start being not-free between 7-8am, they work perfectly for those that live there, but drive to work outside of the city (I did that for a few years myself). Many commercial streets are no more than 1/2 full most nights.

I really think advocating more for the midtown model of no daytime parking is better than the no overnight parking model.