Parking

We haven't really talked about it on Streetsblog, but when state lawmakers killed congestion pricing, they also nixed the city's proposed Residential Parking Permit program.

Back in January United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten protested Mayor Bloomberg's mandate to reduce the number government parking placard handouts. In a letter to the mayor, Weingarten called the move "deeply troubling," and claimed that taking free parking away from teachers -- who, unlike tens of thousands of other government employees, "are not abusers of parking permits" -- would keep "the best and the brightest" from accepting jobs in city classrooms. (What this says about transit-using teachers, who must pay for TransitChek cards even as the best and brightest drive and park for free, is anyone's guess.)

Amsterdam Ave. and 76th St. with street space reallocated to walkers, bikes and buses.

Buses and trucks jockey for position on 181st Street in Washington Heights

StreetFilms' Clarence Eckerson took these shots yesterday at the Bronx County Courthouse on Grand Concourse, where an area plagued by illegally parked government employee vehicles has been replaced by a public plaza.

We're nearly a couple of weeks into baseball season, and fans of the Washington Nationals are enjoying their new transit-, bike- and pedestrian-friendly stadium. The DC complex, with its transit links, shuttle buses and valet bike parking, is so accessible -- and city efforts to encourage fans to get there by alternate means so successful -- that on Opening Day its relatively few parking lots weren't even full, reports Greater Greater Washington:

Now that the Legislature has said "no" to pricing streets, attention has turned to pricing curbside parking. It's no secret that meter rates are ridiculously low. This is because the DOT has been told by generations of mayors to keep the price down in an effort to appease motorists. The cost of this ill-considered gesture is a plague of cruising traffic, rampant double parking, congested streets, and motorists with nowhere to park paying $600 million a year in parking tickets.

Here's how space is divvied up on Kent Avenue today...

They're summonsing their own, and then some.