Brooklyn Heights Residents Sound Off About Lack Of Parking Spaces in Brooklyn Eagle Video

Until we get commercially available self-driving fully electric cars, I’d sooner do everything possible to reduce the number of cars on the road. They stink and are noisy and dangerous. Making them as unattractive to own as possible seems like a way to go. NYC has a few hundred traffic fatalities year on top of the awful pollution. Take the damn subway or ride a bike.

A number of civic organizations and individuals worked for several years with elected officials on a residential parking permit (RPP) program covering the brownstone communities surrounding the Downtown Brooklyn business district. It turned out that NYC cannot create this program without approval from the Albany legislature. To that end, the Assembly and Senate must first pass a bill to waive the home rule restriction and than pass a bill to allow an RPP program to be established. Bills for the first step were introduced by Assemblywoman Joan Millman and Senator Dan Squadron. I don’t know whether that first bill passed.

Two bad residents don’t have the freedom that tour buses and tourists do to ignore parking regulations altogether, and to park freely in no standing zones without worrying about getting a ticket — the way the buses and tourists do to get “the shot” from Furman Street.

The comments from past attempts at getting this done were that the Reps from the districts that included Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, etc….were pulling rank and defeating any attempts..they want their residents to be able to drive up to the Hts, park and take the subway. Now this I don’t understand, why drive on the Gowanus and BQE at all when you could take the train… NYC could have followed the model of several European and S.American cities and built public garages underneath their green spaces (Cadman Plaza park being a prime example)

It would be nice if there could be more affordable parking garages. Also, cars aren’t the biggest polluters. Meat/dairy eaters are. Check the facts. Here is but a sampling:
Over a year:
If you eat one less burger a week, it’s like taking your car off the road for 320
miles or line-drying your clothes half the time.
If your four-person family skips meat and cheese one day a week, it’s like taking your
car off the road for five weeks – or reducing everyone’s daily showers by 3
minutes.
If your four-person family skips steak once a week, it’s like taking your car off
the road for nearly three months.
If everyone in the U.S. ate no meat or cheese just one day a week, it would be
like not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road.

Happy to discuss further but I suspect many will be defensive.

If you can’t have people over because parking is difficult, move out to the suburbs. Your friends are clearly too stupid to figure out how to get around a city. We have abundant public transportation, and street parking is not all that bad, as long as you don’t insist on parking on your block. Having a car is a luxury, not a right, nor a necessity. (Also, that’s one of the most incoherent “reports” i’ve ever seen. The firehouse doesn’t share parking with anyone, they have designated spots that only they may use.)

Right? One of the main reasons I decided to live in this neighborhood is because of the diversity of subway lines. 2/3/A/C all here with a quick walk to the F/4/5/R(when it works).

While parking spaces may be limited, it still makes sense to have RPPs so that residents of the neighborhood get priority. But, a key to any successful parking solution for residents of the neighborhood is to finally get the police department to enforce parking regulations in the neighborhood even-handedly. It is galling that every single Sunday parishioners from other neighborhoods attend local churches and are allowed to park illegally. Not only do they park on sides of the street where parking is not permitted, but they park their SUVs with out of state license plates on the sidewalks, in the bike lanes, and in no-standing zones, creating extremely dangerous traffic conditions and property damage, yet the police consistently ignore it because the cars have Attending Liturgy signs on their dashboard, while they ticket other cars, perhaps of neighborhood residents unloading children or groceries, who are parked in the same area on sides of the street where parking is not permitted. How the NYPD can condone such blatant illegal activity, and give preferential treatment to religious group, is beyond comprehension.

The notion that the city is hard to visit is contradicted by the 50M tourists we get per year. The number of daily visitors to NYC would fill every home in LA.

“Having a car is a luxury, not a right, nor a necessity” Owning a car is as much a “right” as owning anything. Many people who live in the city do need to own a car, for various reasons.Who are you to determine those reasons to be illegitimate? Just because public transportation is available, does not mean it is always the best or even possible choice for many urban residents.

you are right, the other parking garages are $499, and thats if they have a spot for you on a monthly basis!

While your assertion is correct, it somewhat misses the point. Automobiles harm a city by choking it with smog and dirt, creating congestion, and negatively impacting pedestrian life. Individuals should have to pay (significantly) for on street parking. Period. Internalize the externalizes, which will lead people to ask: is it really worth $100 (or more) a month to own a car in the most public transit-connected city in America? Most will reasonably give up the idea. Those who don’t will pay the actual cost of owing a car in New York City. It’s about time we made all street-parking paid parking.

Yes. I can own a sofa, too. Or five of them. That doesn’t mean I get to store them on a public street at no expense.

This reminds me of when I led the battle to get the church on Henry to have their congregants stop parking their cars in the bike lane.

The pastor there at the time (since moved on), said to me, “If people can’t drive to church, they won’t come.” LOLZ.

I agree. Free on street parking is a farce. Why should car owners be handed out a 10′ x 6′ piece of property for free? What do I get, as a non-car owner, who should be equally entitled to that space? Nothing. I get more cars on the road trying their best to kill me!!!, smog, congestion, honking, noise, and delusional neighbors complaining for the brooklyn eagle.