Parking

During the Bloomberg administration, city officials spearheading a giant Lower East Side mixed-use development larded it up with parking above and beyond what's normally allowed in Manhattan. Now, the company in charge of building the project says it's going to go parking-free, and is hosting a public meeting on its plan tonight. This could be a huge victory for Lower East Siders who want more housing but not more traffic and dirtier air, and it should be a lesson for the NYC Economic Development Corporation with far-reaching consequences.

If there's one thing American planners fear, it's that someone, sometime, somewhere, won't be able to immediately find a parking space. Gigantic manuals have been devoted to avoiding this "problem," and laws have been passed in nearly every community in the nation to ensure that no one ever lacks for parking.

And now back to Seaman Avenue. A few weeks ago we noted that motorists who obtain disability permits from the city can basically park wherever they want, even in "no parking" zones with curb ramps for pedestrians with disabilities. An unmarked crosswalk at Seaman and W. 214th Street, in Inwood, is a favorite spot for placard bearers, whether their parking credentials are legitimate or not.

Imagine if your neighborhood's streets were used as an employee parking lot for a nearby office building, and the people in charge of enforcing the rules turned a blind eye, day in and day out, as they ticketed members of the public but ignored lawbreaking by their colleagues.

The federal government spends billions of dollars a year on tax subsidies that make traffic congestion worse, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by TransitCenter and the Frontier Group. The culprit is the parking commuter tax benefit, which costs taxpayers $7.3 billion in foregone revenue each year, all while adding more than 800,000 cars to rush-hour traffic on the nation's roads each workday, the authors estimate.

I've taken up the early morning walk habit, and my route takes me through the intersection of Seaman Avenue and W. 214th Street, in Inwood. It's a T intersection with an unmarked crosswalk and curb cuts.

Point-to-point car-share service Car2Go will launch next month across the western third of Brooklyn. One of the questions hanging over the launch was whether the company would pay the city to let its customers park for free at metered spaces. Now we have an answer: DOT will not change its parking rules to accommodate Car2Go, whose customers will have to pay to use metered spaces. In areas with a high concentration of meters, the company will secure private off-street parking for its users.

DOT reconfigured the southern part of the Kent Avenue bike lane this spring, but that hasn't stopped drivers from taking over the lane and the sidewalk for personal parking.

In most of New York City, zoning requirements compel new development to include a certain amount of parking. These mandates make housing more expensive while causing more traffic and pollution, but the Department of City Planning took only the most timid steps to reform them during the Bloomberg administration, and the de Blasio administration isn't shaping up much differently. Now a small team of architects and urban designers has a strategy to make progress on parking reform, and while it's not exactly bold, it may appeal to the conflict-averse DCP.