Parking

StreetFilms' Sean Clifford discovers that one of New York City government employees' favorite illegal parking spots in Downtown Brooklyn happens to be the last vestige of a historic road that played a significant role in the Revolutionary War. Alas, did George Washington's brave regiment of Marylanders sacrifice their lives at Gowanus so that government employees could park all over the sidewalk on Red Hook Lane?

"I don't see why people have to pay market rents to live in a neighborhood but the cars should live rent-free. In New York you have expensive housing for people and free parking for cars. You've got your priorities exactly the wrong way around."

Over at the site UncivilServants.org, the Transportation Alternatives project where readers can post photos of illegally parked cars sporting government-issued parking permits (like the court officers above who are comfortably ensconced in a no-parking zone on Crosby Street), there's a hot thread on whether showing the plate numbers of the vehicles constitutes a potentially dangerous invasion of privacy for police officers and others who are caught in violation. What do Streetsblog readers think?

Last Tuesday night Ryan Russo and Josh Benson from the Department of Transportation presented a plan to Manhattan's Community Board 2 to create a safer east-west bike route across Lower Manhattan. With three cyclists having been killed on Houston Street over the last two years and major reconstruction of the street currently underway, members of CB2 led by Ian Dutton have been advocating for  a physically-separated bike lane to be built on Houston Street.

The Fifth Precinct in Lower Manhattan has a new commanding officer, a local boy, Dep. Inspector Gin Yee, and he's not afraid to tow some cars, even if they belong to his co-workers. In fact, he's already towed 15 cars, 12 of which belonged to NYPD officers. Downtown Express reports:

This is the third in a three-part series on New York City parking policy.Part 1: The New York City Parking Boom  Part 2: Parking: If You Build it They Will Come... in Their Cars

In New York City, a privileged class of workers numbering in the thousands breaks the law every day by using government-issued permits to park their personal vehicles wherever they want. They disrupt traffic, create safety hazards, and degrade quality of life and, yet, no matter how much people complain, nothing ever seems to change. One study estimates that illegally parked government employees cost the city $46 million annually in unpaid parking fees.

Early Friday morning, more than 100 transportation experts and advocates descended on the garish hell that is New Times Square to hear a two-hour presentation about parking. In a cozy theater across the street from Dave and Buster's, UCLA urban planner Donald Shoup held forth on his much-discussed ideas for reforming traffic via "market-based" street parking.

A Chinatown tipster sent along these remarkable pictures yesterday of what seems to be an effort to cut down on placarded vehicles clogging the neighborhood's streets: