Parking

It's March, which can only mean one thing: Parking Madness time. Last year we asked our readers to help us crown the worst parking crater in an American city, and in that inaugural 16-entry bracket, Tulsa blew away the competition. But we know there are still plenty of other parking lots out there that make downtown look like a lunar landscape, so here comes the sequel.

In his first big stand on development, Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to wring more affordable housing out of the Domino Sugar Factory project on the Williamsburg waterfront. The mixed-use plan currently calls for 2,284 housing units, 29 percent of them affordable. The mayor is looking for more affordable housing, while so far developer Two Trees Management has offered to solidify its existing commitments.

Probably the dumbest part of a stupendously dumb Post story about double-parking tickets and the Columbus Avenue bike lane is this:

In its latest parking report, the Department of City Planning claimed that residential off-street parking is not linked to increased driving, contradicting previous research. In response, the parking policy experts who produced that research are reprimanding the agency for jumping to conclusions based on insufficient evidence. The flub by DCP could have big consequences, because it undermines part of the rationale for eliminating parking mandates.

Since the theme of the week is snowy streets and what we can learn from them, I thought I would share this photo of snow-covered windshields I took this morning on Park Place in Prospect Heights. The last significant snowfall came down during the wee hours of Wednesday morning, so these cars clearly have not moved since Tuesday at the latest, and in all likelihood have been immobile since before the Monday snow storm. Alternate side parking has been suspended the whole week, after all.

A report from the Department of City Planning issued during the final days of the Bloomberg administration is a trove of data about parking, but a look behind the pretty maps reveals a department that remains focused on dictating the supply of parking spaces and reluctant to use its power to reduce traffic and improve housing affordability. Mayor de Blasio and his to-be-announced city planning commissioner will have to fix this backwards approach to turn parking reform into an effective tool for the administration's affordability agenda.

Happy New Year, transit riders! Congress has a special present: Some of you will be getting a tax increase this year.

A wave of new residential construction projects in places like Seattle, Boston, and Miami are showing that, yes, modern American cities can build housing without any car parking on site.