Parking Permits

Parking dysfunction in residential neighborhoods isn't caused by the lack of a permit system, it's caused by giving away finite curb space for free.

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.

Many New Yorkers are familiar with car-sharing services -- like Zipcar, Hertz Connect, Enterprise CarShare, and Carpingo -- that charge by the hour or day, with a reserved space where customers must start and finish a round-trip rental. Daimler-owned Car2Go operates differently: it charges by the minute or hour, and is focused on one-way rentals, allowing users to return a car to any on-street space within the company's service area. The company, already operating in ten North American markets, is eyeing New York.

The Department of Transportation has rejected neighborhood demands to implement residential parking permits around the Barclays Center and Yankee Stadium, according to a DOT report released last Friday. DOT cited the availability of on-street parking spaces during Yankee games, the large number of non-residents parking on the street for purposes other than visiting the stadium, and the heavy costs of administering and enforcing an RPP program.

A City Council committee took the first step toward bringing residential parking permits to New York City neighborhoods this afternoon. Details haven't been worked out yet, but committee members signaled their desire to move forward on a system that would restrict a portion of curbside parking space to use by local residents.

City comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson is urging the Ravitch Commission today to push for a revival of the commuter tax to help stave off an MTA "doomsday scenario," expected to unfold next spring unless the agency gets help.

We haven't really talked about it on Streetsblog, but when state lawmakers killed congestion pricing, they also nixed the city's proposed Residential Parking Permit program.

Assemblyman Jim Brennan, a Democrat from Brooklyn, has introduced a new congestion pricing bill, according to a statement released by his office. The bill contains some elements lifted from Mayor Bloomberg's original proposal, including:

At a Community Board 12 meeting in Northern Manhattan last night, City Council Member Robert Jackson said he would "probably" vote in favor of the current congestion pricing plan.