We know how much the average Brooklyn Heights resident loves to talk about parking and tonight you'll have the chance to jibba jabba all you want about it:
Brownstoner: This Monday, several City Council Members and a number of neighborhood groups are holding a forum for Brooklynites to chew on the idea of residential parking permits. The town hall-style meeting will focus on whether the permits, which would probably cost a small annual fee, could help alleviate curbside parking problems and traffic in Downtown. Council Members David Yassky, Letitia James and Bill de Blasio have organized the event, which is expected to draw several hundred residents, and DOT comish Janette Sadik-Khan is scheduled to attend. Councilman de Blasio sees the forum as the first step in developing parking strategies for all of Brooklyn.
The forum is tonight at 7pm, St. Francis College Auditorium 180 Remsen Street.
Update: Streetsblog has a blow by blow from Monday's meeting.
first time i have been inspired to write into a blog. i think residential permits are a great idea. i can’t tell you how many times i have walked down my street to see half of the parking spots occupied with out of state plates. mind you, these people are not paying new york city insurance rates, probably not paying new york city taxes, and new york city registration/car fees.
it may not be the worst idea to implement a system like Boston’s parking system, where you must have your car registered and insured in a specific neighbourhood (sp) in order to recieve a parking pass. let all the out-of-staters put their cars in garages.
thoughts?
Parking permits are a horrible idea in ANY neighborhood. If you’re visiting from out of town or out of state the last thing you need is one more crazy, convoluted New York City parking regulation to worry about.
How else to keep the riff-raff from parking on our streets my dear? Putting up gates is just impractical so lets give out big parking tickets to all the outsiders who are taking advantage of our lovely streets for their own selfish parking needs.
As for tradesmen and the like, well, they will have to make do. People in trade are very resourceful, they can always park in DUMBO or one of those other Brooklyn places.
Can someone explain why the heck someone would pay top dollar to live in a neighborhood with excellent subway service and close proximity to Manhattan would want to own a car? I think 90% of the reason I moved here is because it is so easy get everywhere and take care of errands without ever needing a car. Not that I appreciate all of those SUVs parked on the sidewalk at the Maronite church every Sunday, but if they are spending money at local businesses I am happy. I would be even happier if those churches paid taxes, but that is another debate.
Residential parking permits will only work if it is done city wide (e.g. Boston) otherwise there will always be a neighborhood that is at the frontier and will have people driving to that area to park – the idea of only having residential parking permits in some neighborhoods won’t work
I’ve visited Boston and parts of DC where they have residential parking and figured it out.
I’ve always been surprised by how many of people are “visiting” from Vermont, Massachusetts, etc. and seem to stay day after day, month after month, year after year.
I think it has to go through if congestion pricing happens. BH already has too many people driving in from LI and taking the subway from here. There will be more of that.
Residential Parking has many upsides, as anyone knows who has lived with it. One is that there are spaces allowed for tradespeople. Now, it’s impossible and they are forced to park illegally, or they call you to say they can’t find parking and thus can’t fix your oven/furnace/whatever. And there are garages too. I don’t think people who drive into NYC are thinking street parking is a given.
They are proposing a trial in Heights and Ft Greene, right? I say give it a try.
Finding parking is a cost associated with having a car.
whether you choose to have a car in brooklyn or not is not the point. the fact is all people who do have cars and pay NYC registration fees and NYC insurance and NYC taxes are subsidizing the people who keep out-of city addresses to duck the city tax and NYC insurance prices. these people live in the city but don’t pay their fair share of the bill. it is really a matter of fairness so that everyone who uses the city services should pay for city services. nothing more than that. with that being said, i give it a snowball’s chance in hell of passing.
I don’t drive, so this doesn’t affect me, but I think people in the Heights who insist on having cars are worse than people who might live someplace where cars are useful. So, I vote no resident parking.
I think most people here use their cars to get to their weekend houses. They aren’t driving to work.
I assume tonight’s meeting will be endless complaints about people who own cars and how they should all be shot, etc etc.
I will pass.
The visitor argument is a non-starter. If its your neighborhood and you live there and you pay the taxes there, then the local government is obliged to stick up for your needs, not the needs of tourists. This was the argument against bike lanes for years (“where will visitors be able to park?” asked Iris Weinstall, who was supposed to be the New York City Commisioner of Transportation, not the head of the Tourist Board) and it drove me nuts (no pun intended).
Another reason this is coming up now is that if congestion pricing goes through, then you will see more and more outsiders parking their cars in BH and hopping the train to avoid the congestion pricing toll. So those of you who think drivers are worse than Hitler should actually be in favor of this plan, because without it you’re about to be flooded with automobiles.
Which raises the question for me: are people who live in Cobble Hill or Park Slope and drive worse than people who live in the Heights and drive?
I would rather pay a toll than try to find parking in brooklyn Heights. How stupid do you think people are? There isn’t enough parking here even for the residents. Most residents park in other neighborhoods or keep their cars garaged in Downtown or elsewhere. I worry about the people who work in the Hieghts but do not live here are they not part of the community? Am I not part of the community if I occassionally rent a car? How about if my elderly parents want to visit their grandson? They should take the subway from Morristown NJ?
This idea is seriously flawed. It will inconvenience the group it aims to serve, namely residents and their friends, family and contractors.
the line of reasoning behind contractors not having a place to park is a stretch at best. i cannot remember the last time i have seen a contractor park in a legit spot. they always park on the alternate side of the street.
also – my guests have to put their respective cars in garages most of the times they visit because spots are not available.
i think the argument is really about theft of services. people who have cars that use them to go up to houses on the weekend and have the cars registered up at the out-of town houses. whether you have car or not, if you are a NYC tax paying resident, you are being ripped-off by these people.
On any given day, about a third of the cars in the North Heights are from out of state. I doubt most of these are commuters (really, how many people commute to Brooklyn Heights from Elyria, Ohio? New Castle, PA? Florida?). I even doubt they’re students at the EHS dorm. They’re your neighbors who don’t want to pay NYC insurance rates.
Personally I’d ban on-street parking entirely, it adds to congestion and is a “recent” innovation.
And if you’re going to rent a car, use Zip-car and forget about worrying over parking it overnight.
anon, I see your point. And I agree with your “how dumb are people?” argument. But we know the situation in BH because we live here. Others who have no connection whatsoever (residents, family, etc) do not know and they will be here looking for parking which we know doesn’t exist.
I think most commuters will try this before paying the toll.
And I see epc’s point, too, but frankly, registering your car out of state if you live here most of the time is illegal. While I hate the NYC rates, it’s hard to defend the argument. If you can register your car outside of NYC, good for you, but you’ll lose out on the benefit. You can’t have it both ways. Meanwhile, those of us who need it or could make use of it shouldn’t suffer for those who can get away with a scam.
Maybe I’m missing something but if you have a weekend home in say, rural Pensylvania, and you use your car to go back and forth between Brooklyn and Pa. why is it wrong or bad to register it there rather than here? It legitimately is used in both places. Probably more there because a car is needed for every errand in a rural place. Why all the hate for neighbors who may have a shack or a grand place in the country? When has it been illegal for out of town guests to come and visit and assume they can park on a public street? In places where the streets are acturally private like Tuxedo Park, residents have extra passes for guests etc. Before we get carried thinking this is such a great idea we should really think of how it will affect us on a day to day basis rather than merely on an ideological level.
I can’t cite specific law, but having been on the wrong side of it myself years ago, it is illegal to live in New York state and keep a car in New York state for more than 30 days without registering it with NY registration. Furthermore, if you have a weekend home in the Hamptons and you register your car there instead of NYC, you can potentially be liable for insurance fraud.
It is insurance fraud to register your car say at you sister’s house or your mother’s house, but if you own a house and it is your house that you pay taxes on, how is it insurance fraud to register your car at your house address? Your insurance company may want to know that you use it to drive to NYC and may want to know if you park it on the street or garage it, but the purpose of owning a car is to go places, sometimes even out of state. It is not illegal to register a car in one state and use it to travel, even for prolonged periods out of state. Geez.
Well, just bcs people are for something doesn’t mean they haven’t thought it thru. Lots of places with residential parking have 2-hr guest passes, like Forrest Hills.
You must legally license your car in your primary residence.
The residents of Forest Hills Gardens, like those of Tuxedo Park mentioned earlier, live in residential enclaves with private streets. That means they pay for the street repairs, for plowing and salting, etc. They are truly private, not public streets. The folks who live there have no worry about parking. They have private garages and driveways. When they invite a lot of people for a party they obtain extra passes. It is a nice secluded, exclusive, gated suburban life. Brooklyn Heights is the opposite of that. We may have been the first suburb but we are no longer suburban. We are a mixed residential/commercial neighborhood. A lot of people work here. Not everyone lives in a single family house, most people live in multiple dwellings. Many buildings that were built as single family houses have been cut up into four, five, six, eight or even more apartments. Brooklyn Heights ain’t Forest Hill gardens. It is a crowded, urban neighborhood. I think it is so misguided for certain folks to want to make it into a suburban neighborhood. It just isn’t. To me, this idea of turning the public curbs into an exclusive “members only” club is ridiculous. I know this appeals to the BHA. Anything that is “exclusive” appeals to them. But I, and I know others will fight this. It is a wrongheaded idea put forward by folks whose ideology trumps their common sense. What we need in the Heights is more parking, not more parking tickets.
My home care attendant drives in every weekday from Nassau County. She gets here early and always finds a parking spot. if this makes it illegal for her to park in my neighborhood I will use all the resources at my disposal to sue the BHA, the DOT, the Borough President, and anyone else involved in this travesty.
I really do not think that people trying to park here to avoid the toll will be a huge problem, real people who drive catch on quickly, Brooklyn Heights is hell on earth for parking. I wonder about the folks, especially the ones who drive trucks, who get to the birdge maybe at 5:30 or 5:35 and who need to kill thirty or so minutes. What will they do? I think they will take a sidestreet tour of Brooklyn Heights. If the boss tells them “I don’t want to see a $30 toll” -or $50 next year- the poor guy is going to have to either pull over to the shoulder or just toodle around the streets until 6:00 PM. This whole thing is assinine. It is old, Dinkins-era, Cuomo-era thinking. It is, literally, retarded. It is old fart thinking.
why would your employee be treated any differently than all other employees?
is she somehow impaired and can’t take a train or park outside the zone?
studies have shown that almost 50% of all local traffic are people looking for parking. this impacts all of us — from our children’s asthma rates to our environment. it’s not all about you.
My Upper East Side friend parks his car here because we have once a week street cleaning rules, while in Manhattan it’s at least twice a week. I’m sure he’s not the only one.
Jo Ann, if your friend from the UES parks here, he must be finding more than just accomodation for his car in the neib. What else is he finding a nice cozy niche for on your block? Hmmm?
9:51
You should look in your heart and ask yourself: Why am I such a self-ceneterd creep?
Anyone have an alternative to parking permits…that would possibly work ? Not that parking permits are guaranteed to work, but at the very least maybe we should give it a try. We do have a problem right now with drivers circling my block & every other block in the Heights several times looking for a space. When my mom moved here in early 60s, she told me it was much better with fewer cars, less pollution & more parking spaces for residents.
How did the meeting go?
For the record, I have a car in BH. I park it on the street. I drive it to see my parents out in LI, or down to my GF’s family’s summer home in NJ (during the summer.)
I do the alt side dance (where I sit in the car for an hour in the mornign and an hour in the evening every Tuesday and catch up on my reading.) Its a chore, but not horribly painful.
The parking permits would probably make my life considerably easier when Im returning to the neighborhood from LI or NJ. Often it takes me longer to find parking in BH than it does to drive here from LI. :/
Did anybody actually attend the meeting?
What happened?
I went to the meeting. The community proposal and DOT proposal are quite a bit different, but it seem the DOT (who is really in charge) hopes to go “live” on a trial basis by Spring 2009.
Proposals are online (look at DOT) and yes, studies show that nearly 40% of daily parking in Brooklyn Heights are “park and riders”. That’s now, without congestion pricing. That’s how I understood it. Have some paperwork at home — but I’m busy at work at the moment.
I’m for it. The audience seemed for it too — for the most part.
To the pro-permit people…do you really think that there are enough parking spaces even for residents?
There are not enough parking spots for all residents. That’s for sure. Residential Parking Permits doesn’t guarantee residents a spot — just makes sure you have a shot at finding parking in your neighborhood and cuts out people hoping to park and ride entirely. All that circling is a major part of Brooklyn Heights traffic.
Should point out, there are more permits than spots in many cities with RPP including Chicago, DC, Boston, London, etc…
RN, it’s not a perfect solution, but then what is ? There doesn’t seem to be a viable alternative at the moment and can we really keep it the way it is now ? No. There’s just too much congestion right now thanks to people just using the area as a “park and ride”.
It will be an inconvenience to some Heights residents who get visitors. Maybe special visitor permits can be handed out to a limited # of people depending on various factors like medical needs. But in the long-term it might improve our quality of life, one of the main reasons people moved to the Heights in the first place…and stayed. Let’s give it a try just like other cities have.
RN, the question was never about whether there would be enough spots for residents. the underlying question is fairness. the residential parking passes will ensure that people will pay taxes/fees one way or another. if they choose to keep the car registered out of the city and opt not get a residential permit then they will have to garage the car, and pay sales tax to NYC through the garage. otherwise you have to sack up and pay NYC insurance rates and registration fees. maybe the additional drivers paying NYC insurance prices will help bring down the cost for everyone else.
And in my dreams, I’ll slash your tires
And in my dreams, I’ll set these fires
In all your fears, there’s nothing new
And all your tears, they won’t help you.
“the residential parking passes will ensure that people will pay taxes/fees one way or another. ”
So the focus is on paying NY taxes and fees? So anyone who lives anywhere in NYC and pays the taxes and fees can get a residential parking pass for BH?
This is just an attempt to keep more outsiders out of the heights and keep it….(fill in your own word here).
Elvis, do you live in the Heights or just park your pick up here?
Anon 10:05 – as far as I know his girlfriend lives with him in Manhattan, but he does talk about Noodle Pudding incessantly. I was just contributing a fact. Why the sleazy insinuation?
Thank you Anonymous (8:00 p.m.)! I also have 2 personal-care Attendants that occasionally drive to work. These individuals work long hard hours doing a job that allows me to maintain my independence. Unfortunately they are not paid very well and I am getting tired of snobby Brooklyn Heights people making them feel unwelcome in the neighborhood. It takes a special type of individual to dedicate themselves to this type of work. The average Brooklyn Heights resident should try to live one week in their shoes. I would venture you could not do it!
However, my objections to residential parking permits does not stop there. What happens when BH people want to drive to other neighborhoods within New York City? The logical next step would be for other neighborhoods to request permits for their areas as well. Unlike people traveling off to the Hamptons, I actually drive to other parts of the city.
Residential parking permits will be a disaster.
you are welcome to pay people more, you know
I think when you discuss this sort of thing it brings out a very hard-core hater type who relishes making other people’s lives harder and more expensive. It astonishes me the glee people express at the thought that working men and women will get expensive parking tickets. It really taps into a dark, sadistic part of certain people’s character. Maybe it is the new Puritanism. The self-righteous punishing outside heathens for their alleged sloth and greed. In my opinion it’s nutty Brooklyn Heights at its worst.
To anon 8:34 the salary is set by my insurance company.
Furthermore, I think too many people use the kind of wimpy option of not using their real name. I use my real name because I do not have a problem with people coming up to me and asking me to defend anything I have written. Although I guess if I was going to spew sanctimonious, vitriolic hate filled rhetoric, I would not use my real name either.
This last comment is not directed towards anon 8:58 who is obviously a thoughtful person
“Elvis, do you live in the Heights or just park your pick up here?”
We call them trucks, and, yes, I come to the heights with all three of my trucks and park them just to piss off the rich white city folk that inhabit BH.
T.K., I think you are missing the point of the parking permits. You state, “I also have 2 personal-care Attendants that occasionally drive to work,” and, “What happens when BH people want to drive to other neighborhoods within New York City? The logical next step would be for other neighborhoods to request permits for their areas as well,” in an attempt to make us realize parking permits will cause less people to drive to (and from) BH. What I think you fail to realize is: that is exactly what we want.
Yes to residential parking…there are already meters for the visitors looking to take advantage of the fabulous shopping and dinning on Montague
If people really care about this issue, they should look on any number of websites or attend a forum and get educated as to what the proposal are instead of just guessing.
For example: the issue of local workers, home healthcare workers, etc have been addressed.
For example: RPP is not about Brooklyn Heights but extends to many brooklyn neighborhoods. The DOT wants RPP available to any neighborhood who wants it.
And yes, it means discouraging driving within new york since there are cabs, car services and public transportation available. And meters and short-term visitors are allowed in every proposal.
Anyone who has a car in NY has it for a reason. I didn’t have one for 15 years. I got one because I need it for a specific reason. We all have specific reasons and concerns, but to think ONLY of your specific issues is, in my opinion, a little narrowminded.
I’m glad to see such an open discussion on this blog. I also attended that meeting and a contingent of anti-RPP people (from Windsor Terrace) tried to raise many of these same concerns (and several of us did attend the DOT workshops, so we are really well informed about what RPP is and isn’t). However, the forum was not a forum. It was a presentation. Anti-RPP questions were not even read. Seriously. They were culled from the questions and discarded. No discussion. Not “will RPP work?” but “What flavor of RPP do you want?”
Interestingly, a “straw poll” was conducted and it was overwhelmingly in favor of the most restrictive plan (i.e. the most “stay out of my neighborhood” plan). Which tells me that people aren’t aware of the facts. They just want to park their cars in front of their houses, no matter what.
Even when the DOT guy said that there were twice as many locally registered cars (even without the insurance cheaters) in their study area as there are spaces on the street, people still didn’t seem to process this information; they chose to believe, instead that getting rid of “commuters” would make their lives better. One woman even admitted that she only drove her car on street cleaning days…gotta wonder, why own a car?
But the point about extending RPP to any neighborhood that wants it (opt-in) would definitely make your lives more difficult. I mean, what if just across the road, you can’t park because you don’t have a permit for it. So, you have to fight it out amongst your own kind (as do they) and pay for the privilege.
I say pass the congestion pricing plan (by the way everyone should read the PlanNYC transportation proposal–lots of good ideas, no mention of RPP) and use the cash to improve transit. Raise the price of metered parking. If warehousing cars is a problem, maybe there is an out-of-area solution (like cheap garage parking with good mass transit access so you can get your car easily when you need it…). So many possible solutions. But RPP is the worst idea. I can’t believe so much time / money / energy is being wasted on it.
Try also to imagine how $75/per year per car will pay for the bureacracy necessary plus the army of traffic enforcement agents to patrol the neighborhood. Seems like a ridiculous waste of money for a dubious cause (on-street parking for residents) with no proven success.
You anti-RPP people who live in BH need to step up and say something or they will bulldoze right over you.
FYI, it is also worth reading the 97 page report; it does not show clear support for RPP. (http://download.brooklynchamber.com/DBC/Brooklyn_Residential_Permit_Parking.pdf )
From the introduction:
“Downtown Brooklyn, however, is a far more complex environment than most other neighborhoods that have successfully introduced RPP programs. Most fundamentally, local residents own more vehicles than the number of curb parking spaces. Despite low vehicle ownership rates, the combination of limited residential off-street parking and high population densities means that excluding commuters and visitors through RPP will, on its own, do little to make parking readily available. There are also special considerations to
ensure equity for the 65 percent of residents who do not own a vehicle (who occasionally require parking for visitors or rental cars), and for shoppers and other short-term visitors.
Point of information: there was no on street parking in NYC before 1947. This shows how many more cars there are now. You can see this in old photographs of the city, which show carless curbs. And no, I neither drive nor own a car. But I do care about all those who park in the “No Standing – Fire Zone” areas. If fire engines can’t get through our narrow streets, lives may be lost.
“fabulous shopping and dinning on Montague”….you’re kidding , right?
Improvements to mass transit promised with last fare increase are on hold.
And people really believe that with congestion pricing – that those monies will end up improving transit?