This is a really stupid idea for a variety of reasons… and I love it. As god-king I’d implement this.
Just eliminate all free parking. Charge for parking what the real estate / time is truly worth.
According to the Internet a parallel parking spot is usually 9.1 x 20 feet. That’s 182 square feet. (Don’t mention the metric system, you know who you are). I just quickly found a 550 square foot studio for rent in midtown that costs $3241 per month. That’s the size of 3 parking spots, so a midtown parking spot should cost $1080 per month or $1.50 per minute. Parking garages in midtown charge about $400-$450 for a monthly pass. That’s a more than 50% discount of what it should be.
Street parking is largely free. When they aren’t free the meters cost about $5 per hour. That’s buy 5 minutes get 55 minutes free.
Unlike the spot in the parking garage, street parking takes up land and nothing goes above them. That’s worth a lot since the car is occupying the vertical space that could theoretically be used. That studio apartment is in a building stacked on top of and below other studio apartments and its price is $3241. In a one story building that same studio would have an insane price. So it’s not just $1.50 per minute. It’s $1.50 per minute times the number of floors of building you could theoretically have on that spot. Let’s say you put a nice 30 story building there. That parking spot is worth $45 per minute and the city charges less than $5 per hour.
Charge $45/minute for street parking in the congestion pricing zone of Manhattan and that’ll fix shit right quick.
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But that’s not as fun as my idea.
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If that really happened it would be crazy fun.
I’d grab my popcorn and camp out on the sidewalk all day to watch people go insane when the bill came in.
Parking in general needs to implement surge pricing for city operated parking meters and ticket stations. Should target something like 80-90% occupancy with the pricing and scale based on demand and bleed off when demand drops. I also feel like if cities are serious about fixing parking issues they need to self-build municipality operated garages. My concern though is that you’ll just create a similar issue that the highway system encounters where it just fills to capacity shortly after any capacity expansion.
Screw that. Just charge any private vehicle without disabled platers $45 for the privilege of entering Manhattan between 6am and 9pm Monday-Friday.
We’re always at 100%. More parking will encourage more driving. We need to scare cars away.
As much as I like the idea of making driving possible in the city via surge pricing and making parking work in the city via surge pricing or making it cost what it actually costs (this may actually work, we’ll get to that in a sec). Both of these ideas are regressive.
When you try and regulate something like this via monetary costs. Those with money deal and happily pay the new costs, and those without are much worse off.
Making it cost what it actually costs may actually lead to meaningful change because then there won’t be as much steep opposition to new development where there’s currently parking. It costs the same. Though I think a better way to handle this is just abolishing parking minimums.
I see market driven pricing mechanics and zone entry pricing as completely compatible systems.
City gov’ts leave money on the table by not implementing market pricing for metered areas already in existence.
The city could throw all the collected money from the zone entry and market parking directly into infrastructure improvements for mass transit.
To be clear, you’re saying the regressive plan is worth it because:
The only plans that will work are ones that make it so there are less cars. If there are less cars, people start to realize how great it is when there are less cars, and then we are on our way to no cars.
No argument here. Less cars are good in my book and I do think that if there were less of them we’d see a bit of a domino effect. I’m all about that. I just think we can accomplish that without further monetarily burdening the impoverished.
Abolishing parking minimums is my personal plan for doing so without being regressive, but I’m open to others. So far, no others have been put forth in this thread.
Put big fees on driving into the city, then put big-ass parking garages outside those limits with easy access from the highway. Then, importantly, decent and always running train lines running from those garages into the city, and not just to GCS. The Metro-North has been my preferred method of getting into NYC but good lord even with that parking can be a bear at the stations I prefer. So sometimes I end up driving further that I otherwise would, in order to get to a less populated station. It sometimes gets to the point where I may as well just drive the rest of the way and park somewhere in the city if I’m going to a concert or other event, what with the delays in taking a train in the first place, having to match my schedule to the train schedule, plan when train service will stop and start in the morning for evening events, and so on. I’m sure there are such places where I could pull off at the outskirts of the Bronx and then take a subway line in, but what I’ve seen is never faster than driving further into the city and stopping closer and closer to the venues until you essentially are just parking at the closest garage.
As long as a way for the outside the city visitors to reliably and reasonably affordably park outside the zone (I’m OK with it costing money but it has to be cheaper than the city zone pass) then install decent and fast transit from the outskirts down to the core of the city (with perhaps an express line that goes to Bronx/Manhattan, one through to Queens, and one straight down to Brooklyn) and I would see that as an absolute win.
Of course there’s still cases where I just have to drive in, carrying lots of equipment and gear and so on. For example I’m in the middle of trying to figure out how I’m going to get into Brooklyn with my car loaded with paintball gear for a game at Area 53 at the end of the month. No way anyone should be taking 2 large Pelican cases full of military-style paintball equipment on public transit so I will have to keep it in my car until I get there.
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I’d say yes, but also no. Do not build things for cars. The more we build things for cars, the more people use cars. What we need to do is just make life shitty for people who choose car and make life good for people who choose non-car.
There are countless people in the city for whom car ownership is not affordable already and for whom public transit is already their go to. Shifting more dollars towards public transit (improving service, frequency, expanding service area) helps those most marginalized and overall has net benefits for the population at large. We’re talking about shifting a line that already excludes a large number of people to exclude a little bit more so that everyone, but especially the already excluded are benefited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGpRgZcT-6g
tl;dw: Congestion pricing and other such regressive means of reducing congestion are only a good idea if there’s already a solid and workable alternative. Not if it’s being used to produce a solid alternative.
I mean, yes, but, outside of urban areas we are probably at least a decade from having the infrastructure to give alternatives to personal vehicles. At a certain point it’ll be all shared self-driving vehicles at which point, great, but, until then if you are outside an urban area and visiting an urban area the most pragmatic solution is give people a good opportunity to transition from the rural mode of moving around which is via privately owned road vehicles, and transition them to a more public mode where the density justifies it. In a large sense, it will likely help get more people used to the idea of not driving in dense areas, which is an overall good thing.
But, I agree with the point that building a parking garage now may not be a long-term good solution, unless those garages are designed so that they can transition to other sorts of use after personal vehicle use sharply declines. Or make them from sustainable building materials so it can be torn down later.
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Every statistic I ever see says that it’s primarily wealthier people who drive into Manhattan.
You’re being a bit wishy washy there. I can be wishy washy too. I have a close friend who’s a chef/manager at a series of restaurants in the Pound Ridge area and part of his job description is driving into Manhattan to chinatown to do some specialty item shopping for his bosses business.
He’s not wealthy.
You know the plural of anecdote is not statistic.
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