Parking

How important is all this street parking, really? What does the city get in return for giving the vast majority of it away for free? Not much, as this video from Transportation Alternatives organizer Luke Ohlson demonstrates.

Cities have traditionally eliminated parking requirements to encourage walking, bicycling, and transit. But it can also aid the rise of on-demand car services, two top parking policy experts say.

One year after Mayor de Blasio's affordable housing reforms reduced some parking requirements, momentum is building to finish the job.

Subsidized parking garages frequently turn into money-losing concrete bunkers on land better suited for something more productive than car storage. The Broad Ripple parking garage in Indianapolis, a pet project of former mayor Greg Ballard, is a spectacular example.

Mayor de Blasio announced plans today to "crack down" on rampant parking placard abuse, one week after his administration granted tens of thousands of new placards to school employees.

About a year ago, someone painted a yellow line on this curb ramp, on a mostly residential street that abuts a park. “It’s the only sidewalk ramp on that side of the street for a block in either direction,” says our reader, “so when someone blocks it, if you need a ramp to access the sidewalk (or the park), you have to go a block out of the way.” According to our tipster, who walks by the ramp twice a day on weekdays, drivers are now much less likely to block it.

The decision last week to grant tens of thousands of new parking placards to teachers and other school personnel is classic Bill de Blasio: a freebie that’s not really free.

The de Blasio administration chose to reissue tens of thousands of parking placards to city school teachers, and was not forced to do so by an administrative law judge, according to the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the union that represents school principals.

Get ready for a lot more car traffic and illegal parking around New York City schools. The de Blasio administration is returning to a system that enables widespread abuse of parking privileges, with the Department of Education agreeing to hand out parking placards to any school employee who has a car and requests one, reversing reforms instituted during the Bloomberg administration.