City to Designate Ten Parking Spots in the Heights to Rideshare Vehicles

Couldn’t agree more. I used to live in a city that had residential parking permits. It generally worked well. They didn’t cost too much but they ensured you registered your car locally. It was 2 hour parking M to F, 8 to 6 or some such.

The only flaw was that the city was divided into zones. That way you couldn’t commute from your part of the city and clog up residential parking elsewhere for 9 hours while you worked. That makes sense. Except for when you want to park in another neighborhood for 3 or 4 hours midweek for some odd reason. But I’m sure that could be worked out.

I find this arrangement a little odd. Neither I nor my family are car users, instead we take the subway or use uber/taxis. Zipcar is only for trips to storage, maybe once a year. Do that many people use Zipcar on a daily basis? Or even weekly? What transportation issue is this solving? It seems out of left field to me, but maybe that’s because I’m not a car owner or a frequent Zipcar customer.

Yes, and the street are not growing.

Indeed there is an influx of weekday parkers, mostly from people working in the area, which is significant. On street parking options are even bleaker east of Court Street so they come here.

Yes you can say 60% is “Most” but what does that mean, the remaining 40% have no rights at all? This is the reason we have the current nightmare in Washington. The majority (even if slight) claims “it’s our way or no way”…

Remember the neologism: carshare. You use Zipcar once a year and don’t own a car. Some folks own cars, use them more often than you but not often enough to really merit owning one. The idea is, if carshare vehicles are more readily available, then some of the people who don’t really need a car will get rid of theirs, freeing up parking for those who use their vehicles more frequently. All the infrequent users will share a car owned by Zipcar or a competitor.

I went through the exact same exercise. That’s how I got to my 10%. (I know many neighbors with no car. I also know many neighbors who own a car… but they ALL park in a garage save maybe one at most.) Clearly we don’t know the same people.

I never argued that simply reducing the number of available spaces benefit those who do not own cars. I’m not advocating for simply turning parking spaces into vacuum. But when you convert those parking spaces into a shared resource such a Citibike rack or parking for share vehicles it’s definitely a situation where everybody wins, whether you own a car or not.

In terms of street parking being paid for by “gas taxes, tolls, etc” that argument doesn’t make sense. Zero dollars of toll money goes to street maintenance. It goes to bridge upkeep or other Port Authority projects like airports and container ports. Gas taxes are the same statewide. What extra tax do you pay at NYC gas stations that’s considered a user fee for on-street parking? Can I get that fee waived if I show a monthly bill from my off-street garage?

Finally, while street parking has been low or no-cost in many places, it’s not universal. You’re flat out wrong about that. Washington DC has had residential parking permits for more than 25 years. So does Philadelphia. And San Francisco. And Cambridge, MA. And Pittsburgh. And Boston. And Chicago. And Seattle. And Portland. And every city I googled. The fees are minor — between $25 and $100 per year — but even the act of requiring a permit would cut down on street parking in our neighborhood as all of those that illegally register their car out of state would be forced to register here and therefore pay the much higher Brooklyn insurance rates.

And even if no other city did charge a fee, things are changing. Fewer people are interested in driving. NYC is more crowded than its ever been. Literally. Not evolving our car practices as things change makes us dinosaurs — headed for extinction.

“Some folks own cars, use them more often than you but not often enough to really merit owning one”, “people who don’t really need a car”
That judgmental attitude is the crux of my irritation. Who are you or anyone to judge who has a “legitimate” reason for owning a car?

I didn’t mean it as a value judgment. I meant it as a calculation that every car owner (myself included) makes regarding the cost and the hassle versus the utility. Touchy on this subject?

This makes sense. There are never available parking spots on weekday days.

Got something against people who wash dishes for a living?

I’d argue that Sunset Park has far more cars in it because it’s been gentrifying, both residentially and with white collar jobs (as in ALL of Industry City). These, for the most part, are not recent immigrants but overwhelmingly people who were born and raised in the U.S.

Car ownership is NOT a function of immigration. It’s a function of relative *wealth*.

“…but once they’re installed we’ll see how often the spaces are empty, as an indication that someone has rented the vehicle.”

I’m not sure how to interpret regularly empty (or full) spaces.

If we see lots of empty spaces, does that mean people are constant taking the cars out? Or does it mean that people just don’t return the cars to the space they got them from? Will people use them for 1 way trips the way they do Citibike?

If the spaces are frequently full does that mean no one is using the cars? Or just that Brooklyn Heights is a popular destination for people using these cars? Or they’re being used for a variety of shorter round trips but say… four 1 hour trips a day.

That means the space will be empty 4 hours, but full 20 hours. I think that would be a smash success… but may be perceived as the cars rotting in place.

I’m all for curbside parking being dedicated to this use but it would be nice if there were some metrics for success that were shared with the community in advance and after a set period.

Here we go again. Johnny One Note, aka One Man Banned, is back with his xenophobic rantings. Sad and soooo predictable.

Typical Arch. Blah, blah, blah, I’m right, blah, blah.