Parking

DOT plans for Chrystie Street would replace parking with bike lanes.

Our regular babysitter Laura, an R train commuter, is out of town this week. Nicole, the woman providing us with back-up nanny service for our 1-year-old, travels to our house, in Park Slope, in a mini-van. This morning she noted, quite happily, that there was so little traffic on her way from Ocean Parkway that she was trying to figure out what holiday it must be.

The Daily News today has the sickening story of an off-duty NYPD officer beating an NYPD traffic agent for ticketing his girlfriend's illegally parked car in the Bronx. The capper: the agent was reportedly cuffed and taken to the precinct, while the cop he says assaulted him has not been charged with a felony, though the state just adopted a law stiffening penalties for attacks on traffic agents.

Un-Shoupian parking policy on display on Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue

From Transportation Alternatives' Queens Committee Chair Mike Heffron:

With development projects across the city threatened by an uncertain economy, critics of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project believe that a slowdown in construction could burden Prospect Heights with decades of blight. A slide show by the Municipal Art Society, called "Atlantic Yards or Atlantic Lots?," offers a bleak look into the future, like this rendering of neighborhood blocks destroyed for "temporary" surface lots that would accommodate some 1,400 cars.

San Francisco is lunging out of the parking dark ages. Backed by the mayor and city council, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is launching "SFpark," a comprehensive, curbside parking reform project encompassing ten city neighborhoods.

It took a little longer than expected, but the City is significantly shrinking the pool of parking placards available to public employees. The total number of placards allocated to certain departments -- most notably NYPD -- has been reduced from roughly 80,000 to about 55,000, as reported by the Times, News, and Post this morning. The police will have 21,474 fewer placards to distribute, a 33 percent reduction.

UPDATE: Intro 637 has been tabled. There will be no council vote today.