I should have thought about your leg issues, since now that you mention it, I recall having seen you limping. So, apologies.

However, I would gladly give up my seat on the subway for you, and I hope you wouldn't even need to ask (though I'm not always fully paying attention). And cycling may even be good rehab, though you may have given that a try already.

NYC residents should be proud of the services we already provide (scheduled door to door transportation to treatment facilities and educational opportunities)

I agree. My friend who was unable to walk for six months after being hit with a motorcycle a block and a half from my apartment told me he was very satisfied with Access-A-Ride. No disagreement on the need for improvement, though.

NYC residents should be proud of the services we already provide (scheduled door to door transportation to treatment facilities and educational opportunities)but, we could do a better job at both the government (the previously cited improved public transportation) and individual (would you like to sit down?) levels.

The grating is at the end of the permitted line of cars adjacent to the building.

Those cars are there illegally. Markowitz is not the law, and he can't singlehandedly appropriate a pedestrian walkway for the use of his staff and guests. Just because he told you to park there doesn't mean you should. If he told you to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge ... ?

And I do not brush off any issues of abuse.

I don't know what kind of abuse you're referring to with that comment, but there was one post that was nasty and offensive, and you were completely right to feel insulted by it. I'm glad Aaron removed it.

As to the pleasant stroll, in fairness, I have had leg and foot and knee problems for the past number of years, resulting in tw ohospital stays this past year. That also affects my ability to stand on a jerking subway car. I don't expect any sympathy...just to point out that driving is sometimes the only viable choice for some people.

Well, sympathy is all I can offer in this case. There are people with the same foot and knee problems who are blind, right? Does that mean they have no viable choices?

Please, Lew. Cars can be useful for all kinds of things, but they're not glorified wheelchairs. There are plenty of disabled people who take subways and buses every day. There are plenty of ways you could get to Borough Hall and back without having to stand on a jerking subway train, or park on a subway grate. This is a false dichotomy.

And I do not brush off any issues of abuse.

As to the pleasant stroll, in fairness, I have had leg and foot and knee problems for the past number of years, resulting in tw ohospital stays this past year. That also affects my ability to stand on a jerking subway car. I don't expect any sympathy...just to point out that driving is sometimes the only viable choice for some people.

Lew from Brooklyn

So you really shouldn't have been there OR on the adjacent spot to which you "moved over," I believe. (And of course that's placard or no placard, but again, that goes to matters of enforcement and privilege)

Also, I'm not saying you're doing it, but please be sure not to brush off the placard part of the discussion because of the lack of warm/fuzzy feelings. Some of the people who comment here may sound witty or angry or both, but I'd say the feelings of all of them on the subject are quite valid, because things like this--parking on public, pedestrian space--is a real issue with genuine consequences for real people. Maybe not the specific time and place you did it in question, but overall, if all your colleagues, and all their staffs, and so on and so on, keep doing it and setting an example to each other, it really does, demonstrably start to negatively impact people's lives around town, and they're entitled to get angry about it.

While admittedly, your district is not as well served by public transportation as some others, you could hop on the B41 bus from your district office to Brooklyn College, and get a free transfer there to the #2 or #5 subway, which would whisk you to Borough Hall without any worry about where to park. And from there, you're only a brief subway trip (or better yet, a pleasant stroll, or ride on your convenient folding bicycle, across the Brooklyn Bridge) away from the Council chambers.

Very environmentally friendly, probably as fast or faster than going by car, and a great way to lead by example.

Individual choices are affected by the government attitude, in everything from furniture manufacturing to agriculture, and certainly including transportation. The trick, therefore, is to set public policy in a way that yields the kind of cities -- the kind of choices -- that we want to see.

Some of these posts confuse commetns I made on substantive issues of transit with the parking issue.

Again, even if YOU can survive without cars, the transit system would be crushed. Just as cars could not survive as a viable trasnportation mode if buses or trains were eleiminated. you may differ. I still believ that as do most people in the transportation field.

As to parking placards, there are legitmate uses and purposes to them---well, some of them.I parked legally except for that one day when I chose to move over as opposed to park on the subway grating. A mistake. I have confessed. Won't do that again. but the fact that you don't LIKE parking placards doesn't make their legitimate use illegal.

The problem with these placards is the feeling it gives to their users to park wherever whenever with impunity (BTW let's follow Lew and see if he uses the placard when is he is not on official business).

By allowing 142,000 people to knowingly break the law adds to a sense of disorder and a feeling that laws are meant to be broken by all of us. Spitzer seems to have been caught up in it.

I can only hope public outrage over placard and parking abuse gets things changed; especially if CP doesn't pass. We know the politicians will never knowingly give up a parking perk, illegal or no.

How is asking you to park with the limits of the law "coercing everyone into one system..." Unless of course that system is the legal system.

I beg to differ. We would survive quite nicely without private automobiles. I have always found it difficult to understand how someone purporting to represent a group can do so without sharing some of their very basic commonalities.

As my Room 8 posts on the MTA budget make clear, all we will be building starting six or eight years from now is nursing homes and related senior facilities.

We'll be lucky to keep the infrastructure we have. There are too many other needs related to an aging, non-working population.

If it isn't done by 2016, forget it.

And the proposals now underway aren't to accomodate growth, they are to ensure the quality of life of those already here. If we get the major improvements now under construction, I will be very happy. But I do not expect this.

The area in question---where the subway grating is---is not sidewlak. And there are significant issues, legally, as to the permissible parking in that area in general. For another day.

and larry, as I ahve said to Angus and others, no single mode of transportation could possibly sustain without the others in this City at this time. If we lost any one of them: caars, buses, subways---the City would strangle in its inability to handle the flow.

you may drive you may not, it may be a choice for you. Last I recalled, Larry, you supported choice. But coercing everyone into one system would only overburden that system.

BUILD IT and they will come.

If Los Angeles cannot accomodate its traffic, Brooklyn certainly can't, let alone Manhattan.

We stretch as best we can. We tolerate double parking for deliveries and street sweeping. We allow illegal parking for those with plackards. We squeeze pedestrians into small spaces. We've chased children off the streets where they once played.

There still isn't enough room. And a payroll tax hike will not create enough room.

So we are left with how to allocate what room there is. The current policy is to restrict off street parking in Manhattan to raise its price, but hand out 140,000 plackards so some people can park for free on the street, legally or illegally. It doesn't seem to have solved the problem.