Parking

A pair of Ikea buses clog Clinton St. in Cobble Hill.

More livable streets news out of Manhattan's Community Board 2. This Thursday, at the request of DOT, CB2 will hold a public strategy session to consider how variable-rate parking might work in the district. If participants determine that such a program would benefit the neighborhood, said CB2's Ian Dutton, DOT has pledged to implement a six-month pilot program starting in September.

A study released today by Transportation Alternatives puts the congestion and waste caused by cheap metered parking in stark terms. The report, "Driven to Excess" [PDF], quantifies just how far Upper West Side drivers go in search of open spots: 366,000 miles a year, or about the distance from Earth to the moon.

We hate to pile on more bad news today, but these tipster-submitted photos of the Brooklyn Ikea grand opening bear witness to the onslaught of traffic about to engulf Red Hook. Apparently, the cars queuing up for cheaply-constructed furniture are stretching the store's 1,400 parking spaces to the max (which would explain why Ikea thought it necessary to annex the old Revere Sugar refinery lot next door). Judging from this anecdotal evidence, Red Hook will not only be subject to the 17,000 car trips projected for peak days, but most of those vehicles will be of the huge, extra-cargo-hauling variety.

Earlier this week, the Times real estate section profiled the developer-architect team behind East River Plaza, a big box retail outlet in East Harlem that will include 1,248 parking spaces when it opens next year. In the piece, we learn that the project's designer, an Atlanta-based Home Depot specialist called GreenbergFarrow, is responsible for other parking-rich shopping centers throughout the city, including Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market (pictured above), Rego Park Mall II, and the Red Hook Ikea.

From Clinton Hill Blog via Gothamist:

Two weeks ago Streetsblog reported on the glut of public parking garages being built in Hell's Kitchen, which threatens to worsen traffic conditions in one of New York's most congested neighborhoods. The City Planning Commission could have set a precedent last Friday by denying a developer's request to build a 400-car public garage as part of a mixed-use project at 310-328 West 38th Street. Only 232 parking spaces would have been allowed without the special permit.

Brad Aaron files this report from Athens, Georgia. 

If there's one thing a neighborhood overrun by traffic doesn't need, it's more public parking garages. But that's exactly what New Yorkers who live by the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel will get if the City Planning Commission allows current development patterns to continue.