Parking

A bicycle and pedestrian greenway that connects protected bike paths on the waterfront to Queens Plaza and Queens Boulevard has become a parking lot, with private and government-placarded cars lining its southern curb for months.

Many residents of American cities can't escape the high cost of parking, even if they don't own cars. Thanks to policies like mandatory parking requirements and the practice of "bundling" parking with housing, carless renters pay $440 million each year for parking they don't use, according to a new study by C.J. Gabbe and Gregory Pierce in the journal Housing Policy Debate.

Transit agencies shell out big bucks to build and operate parking facilities. But how much do we really know about what they get for their money?

Building a single parking spot can easily cost more than many Americans' life savings. In the latest issue of Access Magazine, retired UCLA economist Donald Shoup brings this point home to illustrate the huge financial burden imposed by minimum parking requirements, especially for poor households.

Here's one company doing business in NYC that doesn't want to hear about fleet safety.

Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn is one of the most important segments in the city's bike network, the key passage to and from the Manhattan Bridge. It's also a huge impediment to biking in the city -- the street is rife with double-parking, illegal U-turns, and the unnerving threat of a car door suddenly opening and throwing you into the path of a passing bus. An upcoming redesign of Jay Street should improve the situation, but it too will be hampered by the culture of parking placard abuse that pervades downtown Brooklyn streets.

We're just getting started with Parking Madness 2016 -- our annual hunt for North America's worst parking craters. So far, Washington, D.C., and Rutland, Vermont, have advanced to the second round.