Perhaps we (advocates for livable streets) should remind the politicians that it’s not just welfare recipients who are car free, but that those without cars can be a potent political force…

Unlike the vacuum cleaner, the radio, or the bicycle, which retain their use value when everyone has one, the car, like a villa by the sea, is only desirable and useful insofar as the masses don’t have one. That is how in both conception and original purpose the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratised. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it. On the contrary, everyone diddles, cheats, and frustrates everyone else, and is diddled, cheated, and frustrated in return.

I guess I am led to ask this: why are we so in thrall to this will-o’-the-wisp concept of motorcars-as-luxury-good that the very real effects that motorcars have on health, morbidity and quality of life are minimized or ignored, even by people who claim to represent a wider perspective?

Harlem has unique environmental/transportation issues, namely the shocking asthma problem, which ranks high among NYC’s environmental justice hotspots. We should frame the parking discussion in Harlem as addressing the unfortunate inequity of lower income minority neighborhoods bearing the brunt of negative environmental impact of traffic, waste disposal, power generation, etc. Bad behavior like cruising, double parking and 150db car stereos just adds insult to injury.

socialscientist:

Your vague web page on externalities is exactly the kind of inexact philosophizing that gets us nowhere. C’mon, Streetsblogger’s like data. Break it down for us…how would free transit in New York work?

Harris’s comment exemplifies why it is so often just impossible to have substantive policy discussion in NYC. All policy discussion breaks down, almost immediately, into racial and identity politics. This political correction ends up styming policy discussion rather than forwarding it. It’s deeply counter productive.

Harris finds some comments in this thread “offensive?” Which comments exactly? I’m hard pressed to find anything offensive above. This just seems like the typical thing where a Harris pops in and simply tries to chill the conversation by inserting the racial issue.

Once people get onto public transport they stay on it. There’s not much point doing part car journey/part public transport as it’s too stressful.

For those few who insist on parking around places like Harlem residents can be protected by ‘resident zones/permits’.

I talked to a friend of mine, a NYC police officer, about permit parking today. One of his neighbors kept calling the NYPD because my friend habitually parked near the hydrant in front of their apartment building. Eventually my friend got summoned to his borough command and was told never to park there again.

Do you really think that putting up a bunch of street signs is going to solve this particular problem? We already have no parking signs and parking meters and fire hydrants. The cops park in front of all of these things with total impunity.

I’m pretty tired of reading your same old rant over and over again so I’m going to get a little bit uncivil here and suggest that you wake the f up already.

You more than anyone else should be clamoring for the State Assembly to allow NYC to install automated, camera-based pricing and enforcement systems. Unlike NYPD parking agents, software isn’t going to pick and choose which cars to hit with fees and fines based on a crappily photocopied placard and PBA sticker on the dashboard.

* The civilian agents are probably afraid to ticket placard cars since their drivers are higher up the bureaucratic food chain (and some carry guns.)