Imagine the charges of unfairness if permits in Quinn or Silver’s district were priced at a level that would be meaningful enough to reduce parking demand.

Another scenario is a “Battle of the Placards” in which newly permitted residential parkers attempted to display thousands of cops, firemen and other govt placard holders.

I am a huge advocate of parking reform, but it seems most plausible to see it coming in increments of a few blocks or at the most in relatively small areas, beginning around the BIDS. All this said, if pricing fails, it would be nice to see McCaffrey and company’s efforts give a boost to parking reform. Mayoral contender Weiner has already talked about it.

Sounds sensible but there is a huge obstacle. Pricing wide swaths of currently free or underpriced on-street parking will stir up a massive outcry from those currently privileged enough to benefit from it: voters who happen to live in Sheldon Silver and Christine Quinn’s districts. If community boards are any indication, many of these parkers will be among the most politically active, and will include thousands of politically powerful municipal workers.

Yes, but from the Observer article, it sounds like McCaffrey and friends were willing to take on that obstacle. If you think they can be counted on to make that effort, then the Manhattan community board people and uncivil servants would effectively be isolated against the combined forces of the Mayor’s and Governor’s Offices, the real estate players, transit interests and T.A. (and the rest of the coalition).

Of course, that’s a big “if.” The anti-CP folks might promise to work to pass parking reform, but then – whoops! Sorry guys, you win some, you lose some!

Carolyn’s arguement is that incorporating parking into the pricing bargain allows a cheaper congestion fee collection system, and thus nets so much more revenue that the pols can’t turn it down.

Sounds sensible but there is a huge obstacle. Pricing wide swaths of currently free or underpriced on-street parking will stir up a massive outcry from those currently privileged enough to benefit from it: voters who happen to live in Sheldon Silver and Christine Quinn’s districts. If community boards are any indication, many of these parkers will be among the most politically active, and will include thousands of politically powerful municipal workers.

Quinn and Silver — key players in the pricing drama — will have to weigh whether stripping thousands of their constituents of free parking is outweighed by the few hundred million in additional revenue that the parking/pricing coupling would produce. Politics are very retail and these sums are relatively small. (Approximate budgets: MTA=$10 billion NYC=$55 billion, NYState=$130 billion.)All this said, if the additional revenue would forestall a fare hike, maybe it would be worthwhile.

Lastly, while pricing streets and parking should work complement each other as they do in London, the great thing about parking reform from a political perspective is that you can implement parking changes block by block. That kind of incrementalism is more easily achived than the mayor’s other major transportation initiatives like BRT or congestion pricing.

I appreciate the focus on my parking pricing proposal but everyone seems to have missed the beauty part–implementing it in the Manhattan pricing zone instead of installing elaborate technology to charge internal trips would enable a much less costly single cordon across Manhattan river to river and the four free bridges that would free up far more funds for transit than the low estimate by the MTA

The personal finance aspects need to be kept in mind. I myself will face some decisions over the next few years. I have a 10.5-year-old car I hope to keep running as long as possible. When it dies, do I replace it? At that point it will be a total cost vs. total cost decision.

How about my teens? Do they learn to drive? How? And if they are going to drive, don’t they need to do it a lot to get good enough to be safe? And if they aren’t going to drive a lot, perhaps they shouldn’t start?

Sorry bikers, by I tried to get my youngest to ride with me to church and soccer. She tried a couple of times, but found she was too afraid of driving on the street with the cars. I asked if she was afraid to ride a bike on the street, how does she expect to be able to drive that way. She said that’s different. Rather than transporting people, it seems we transport metal to protect us from other people’s metal.

I have mixed feelings about car ownership, because I spent twenty years living in New York without a car and I got around on my bicycle just fine.

But it is so much more convenient than mass transit, and much safer (especially compared to bicycling at night) that I would gladly swallow as much as an extra $50 a month for an on-street residential parking permit, especially if that would keep the Jersey-registered cars off the streets.

BTW pricing parking will still leave a substantial number of us who act as taxis. One person cruises while another does the errand, gets dropped off, etc. It’s the driving

Actually, after the cost of the vehicle itself (depreciation and finance), the largest cost is insurance. Thus the majority of the costs of the automobile are either FIXED or EXTERNAL (congestion, pollution, etc.)

What that means is, aside from travel to Manhattan for those without special deal parking, once you have a private car it is almost always the fastest AND cheapest (other than walking or biking) way to get around.

That is because one isn’t including the fixed costs, let alone the social costs, in the calculation. So it doesn’t matter how expensive a motor vehicle trip is on a total cost basis, only on a marginal cost basis.

There are many trips my family takes by car that, if we rented as needed instead of owning, would be taken some other way. But everyone knows the car is there, so which mode we choose is a matter of the lowest common denominator — who will be ready late enough that we will be late if we walk the mile. I’ve not even counting the weekly trip across the street for alternate side, which is generally the only driving I do during the week.

So making it easier and cheaper to use a car occasionally when needed could do a lot to eliminate auto trips when not needed. And charging for on-street space, which is an incentive not to have a car you don’t use very much, also helps.

Sproule Love, if you don’t have a car, you don’t have car insurance. The only options I know of are maintaining your own liability policy to the tune $1200 or so a year minimum, or paying the rental companies by the day. If there’s something I’m missing, please share. (I’m talking about liability, not collision which is covered by many credit cards.)

BTW, I’m also in favor of increasing the costs of using a car in New York, where there are good alternatives. For the vast majority of trips within NYC, particularly commuting, there’s simply no reason to drive and those who choose to do so should pay for the increased strain they place on the city.

Obviously, the exorbitant cost is worth it for most people who live the U.S. because there aren’t other options in many places. But here in New York City, any rational cost-conscience resident wouldn’t own a car. People tend to really underestimate the cost of owning a car, while they overestimate the cost of renting a car. People often buy insurance from a rental car company, which is one of the great scams in business today. Not only is collision covered by most credit cards, but most auto insurance policies (my Gieco policy does) extend to you if you’re driving a rental car, so you get better liability coverage than the State minimum. Sure, if you buy insurance from the rental car company and damage the car, you don’t have to deal with the hassles of an insurance claim, but that convenience is expensive.

Anecdotally speaking, I think renting a car in NYC can easily be $75 to $100, and sometimes there are no cars available on holiday weekends. Zip cars aren’t great for long trips, so while owning can be more convenient than renting, it’ll cost you and your fellow citizens more than many drivers think it does.

All that said, I’m in favor of increasing the cost of parking. That combined with cracking down on illegal permit use by city employees would go a long way toward reducing the use of cars in NYC, which is really what were talking about here.

1. Would rational parking pricing (varied by time of day if necessary) by itself make the city eligible for the Urban Partnership grant money?

2. If so, is there any reason to oppose such a compromise?

Human-scale transportation with minimal environmental impact can provide practical solutions to this and other issues but considerable funding is required for research, development, and industrial design around potential solutions that meet developed-world expectations similar to what a.v. describes.

The speed record for completely human-powered recumbent bicycles is over 80 miles per hour for about 200 feet achieved by elite atheletes. Adding a small electric motor puts this type of performance within the reach of “normal” people greatly adding to the speed and range using hybrid human-electric vehicles and greatly improving the practicality and convenience of using human-scale transportation as a substantive improvement on conventional automotive travel.

The powers that be should be working on this ASAP before it is too late and a climate change tipping point has been reached when the bulk of funds will urgently be needed for adaption and survival.

Zipcar is a good idea, but again there is an insurance problem. I am not comfortable driving on the NJ turnpike knowing that if I do more than $5000 damage to somebody’s lexus I’m screwed. Zipcar does not offer the option of additional insurance. From what I have heard, it is also nearly impossible to reserve a zipcar on summer weekends.

Anyway, my point was not to get bogged down in the details, but to point out that the cost and hassle of obtaining of car for a weekend trip is high enough as to encourage car ownership among people who value being able to leave the city with any degree of regularity. If the goal is to have fewer cars in New York, then this is an impediment. I don’t know much about what the economics of it look like from the rental companies’ perspective, and I could be wrong, but I find it difficult to believe they are not making a hefty profit here.